Monday, February 06, 2012

Kindred Healthcare Employee Reviews: Understaffing, Profits over patients

The Website "http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Kindred-Healthcare-Reviews-E8220.htm posts employee reviews of many U.S. Corporations. One such corporation, Kindred Healthcare, a  large national healthcare chain of nursing homes, resulted in 63 past and current employees writing in reviews. These reviews are anonymously written to protect the employees who are still employed at Kindred. They range from good to bad. Important to note are some of the recurring criticisms of Kindred by their own employees in areas of nursing home patient care and employee support for providing care to nursing home elders. Another is the recurring theme of putting profits over people. Under staffing is repeatedly mentioned. The reviewers gave an average rating of 2.7 out of a possible 5 saying it "was O.K." (5 being the highest or best rating as a workplace). Paul Diaz, the CEO got a "47% approve" rating.
According to Glassdoor, the following comments were made including these quotes:
Jan 30, 2012 reviewer
Cons
"They say they go by patient accuity, but they don't. They cram as many patients' in as they can and sometimes 2 patients' to tiny rooms where beds aren't hardly 2 feet apart! They take anybody, whether the patient has been known to abuse staff and also many weighing over 300 pounds, which is hard on staff. It is all about money there! .... Staff goes out with way too many patients! We are then expected to watch patients "closely"(one floor won't allow sitters and hardly any restraints) who are confused and unrestrained, so that they aren't falling and pulling trachs out, but no one can keep up with workloads , watching patients, and answering alarms promptly. People who are FULL Codes are allowed to repeatedly pull out vital tubes, and staff must promptly" keep" replacing them in emergent situations.
2) Oct 25, 2011
"Very depressing place to work"
Advice to Senior Management: Monitor employee behavior"
3) Nov 5, 2011
"terrible leadership at the top, backstabbing, unprofessional conduct by the administrator and people over her, no respect for the good people working there and giving their best for the patients, hidden agendas by the DO, which caused the entire building to fall apart when the good people left..."
4) July 11, 2011. This reviewer gave Kindred a good rating but still added some:
"Cons - Corporate emphasis on making money seems to detract from patient care. Not enough staff/staff cut to minimum when census low."
5)  August 15th, 2011 "“Very Stressful Environment, Lacking Communication and Professionalism” 
 "Cons - There is a lack of communication between Nursing and Nurse Management. There is lack of support and trust of Nursing staff among upper management. There is a very negative morale in the facility among employees. The corporation does not provides the resources needed to do a quality job. Patient care is not priority.
Advice to Senior Management
Please read your mission statement. Patient care is and should be priority. Give your nurses what they need, please."
6) July 6, 2011 Employee:
  “It's all about the bottom line...money
"Pros: great co-workers who work very hard without much appreciation
Cons: big push on getting people in the door, regardless of the quality of care given
Advice to Senior Management: treat your employees like you would like to be treated."
7) June 26, 2011:
Very dangerous place to work.”
Cons
"Intentionally very short staffed, ......Care plans from other disciplines have to be completed by the nurses and it is impossible to know what tasks were completed. .....Too many opportunities for errors.
Advice to Senior Management Listen to the nurses at the bedside. What's good for them is good for patients. Making the nurse's jobs impossible to do well is not good business practice. Protecting and padding the bottom line today will not pay for potential litigation tomorrow."
8) June 26, 2011 current employee
“Please look into the facility before you agree to be an employee. You may be shocked!”
Cons
"Terrible communication between staff and management
State deficiency =TOO many!
Lack of sensitivity and empathy (management and co-workers)
Understaffed for every shift
Dangerous working environment"
9) March 17, 2011 current employee
“High burnout, no bonus, abusive management, keep you in the dark”

Cons
.....Not a professional environment...Team members get written up on a frequent basis if someone speaks up. It is an uncaring environment where everyone is unhappy.
10) Feb , 2011 past employee
Consistently understaffed, overworked and underpaid!”

Cons
Frequently under staffed
11) Jan 6, 2011
"The company cares too much about money and not enough about the patients."
12) Sept 9, 2010 current employee
If you want a for-profit place to work that is more concerned about money than patient care, this is it.

Cons
"Bottom line is, Money First, People Second. I just cannot get past the mantra of a for-profit business like this. Making a buck is more important than making a difference for a patient.
Advice to Senior Management
Your Senior Management leaders should be CLINICIANS - RN's, MD's, etc. Healthcare Adminstrator and Marketing Managers - these people could have come from sales in cell phones. They have no idea how a real hospital works".
13) Aug 12, 2010 current emplyee
“Kindred has reputation for over-working staff and understaffing.”
Cons
"Everything is about cost, budget, cut-backs, money. You work with MINIMUM staff for high accuity patients, and they go by census. Our bldg is HOT too, because it is old, and you are over-worked..."
14)  July 28, 2010 
“Fix your company”
Cons
"Never enough people to take care of the residents. Sometimes their is only 4 cnas for 70 residents,most of the time only 1 or 2 nurses on the floor for 70 people. That is not proper care ."
15) April 6, 2010
"Patient satisfaction is secondary to making money."
16) 3-31-2010 past employee (2009)
“Worked to the bone.”
Cons
Nurse to patient ratio is the biggie. I would have 5 vents and 1-2 walkie-talkies. All on numerous antibiotics and needing full care. Did I mention that we would have 2 CNAs for the ENTIRE floor. Sometimes only one.  All in all, a hellhole, and that's why those of us who endured that place called it "HELLDRID".
17)  March 21, 2010 current employee
Saving a dollar takes priority over competent patient care

Cons
.....we are constantly understaffed and overworked. Instead of going by patient acuity, which means that they would have to have more staffing, they're going by the number of patients in the building, trying to save a dollar, but in reality, they're putting the patients in jepardy. And another thing, how can you cut the respiratory staff, when Kindred is a respiratory hospital? Hello, is anyone home? Why is there one respiratory therapist assigned to twelve or thirteen patients? I don't understand, but in the end it's the patient that is going to suffer
Advice to Senior Management
My advice would be to .... really take the concerns that your employees have seriously, because you never know when you or your family may be laying in the bed wondering why is it taking so long for your nurse to give you pain medicine, or why you are laying in the bed choking, and your respiratory therapist isn't there to suction you in a reasonable time."
18) March 2, 1020 current employee
Cons
People in charge so scared of going over budget I can't make orders the last week of the month practically. There are never enough supplies in the building for our residents because of this.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I currently work at Kindred Healthcare in Raleigh,NC.PLEASE
DO NOT WORK HERE UNLESS DESPERATION.EMPLOYEES &STAFF TREATS YOU LIKE SLAVES.AND THE PATIENTS ARE NOT BEING TAKEN CARE OF PROPERLY DUE TO UNDERSTAFFED.THE KITCHEN WOW WILL WORK YOU LIKE A SLAVE,PAY IS AWFUL.NO TIME N A HALF PAY FOF HOLIDAYS WORKED.THIS IS NOT A PLACE I WOULD PUT A FAMILY MEMBER

Anonymous said...

Was at Kindred hospital in louisville in 2013 for what was suppose to be short term healthcare, that ended up being the worst medical experience of a twelve year post injury. The fourth and fifth floor unit manager was the biggest joke that i have ever seen in my entire medical experience of letting the staff do what and when they wanted to do like she was running a cicus. The staff knew that they could get away with anything and not have to worry about her repremnding them as long as she would not be in trouble for the way the staff treated and never cared for the patients care or needs. She is a total joke to be working in the health care in general. But when i was transfered to the sixth floor, it was biggest and best change that a patient could personally experience. The sixth floor staff rocks! Keep up the great work sixth floor staff, while i feel pain any patient on the fourth or fifth floor will have to go through the total hell that i experienced. Take a former patients exprience, you need to reconceder who is in charge of those two floors before you end up with some kind of lawsuit or something over even worse!

Anonymous said...

just quit as an employee..my thoughts Wow!!!!!!! the infections that are traveling around in this hospital are very serious..one minute a patient would not have anything and the next day they have cdiff, something that begins with an a and K..i mean it is ridiculous!!i employees going in and out of rooms not washing their hands or using hand sanitizing..not gowning up before they enter the room, come out and go to another patient..i came from a non-profit organization and never have i seen people treated as this!!! Kindred, Get a Grip on Infections spreading throughout the hospital..The patients are sick already!

Anonymous said...

Should it take 52 minutes from call to nurse to ask for bed pan to get tech in to place it and nurse to clean and remove it? Btw it took 37 minutes to be placed. 4th floor

Anonymous said...

Understaffed big time, no communication, & definitely unsafe practice. This is the scariest place I've worked. There is no way patients are getting proper care if supplies are low, and so are personnel. The employees even complain but nothing changes. My hats off to the nurses that stick it out, but beware your license is in jeopardy.

Anonymous said...

I am a former employee of Kindred Hospital in Philadelphia and I am telling you all not to work there. The complaints are no different than what I've read from everywhere else in the country. Staffing is poor most of the time as they do not take acuity into consideration, only the census. care is terrible because of the staffing and I would never put a family member in that place. They should not be allowed to remain open but who the hell knows who they are paying off.

Anonymous said...

The Director of Nursing at the kinder facility where my daughter lives was fired in December 2015 and arrested in Feb 2016 for impersonating a nurse. She worked ther for two years using someone else's license. After that, most of the staff left. New staff is not trained well. One nurse didn't know my daughter is NPO. They are unfamiliar with individual care plans, so they don't get carried out. One nurse didn't want to split a pill in half so he decided not to give it. When my daughter started having more seizures her neurologist raised the dose of one of her seizure medicines based on faulty information. A couple weeks later a nurse skipped some seizure meds for 2 days and put my daughter into withdrawal. My daughter's neurologist has ordered tests on two occasions that were simply ignored and not completed. They continuously ignore doctor prescribed treatments for my daughter's skin allowing it to breakdown. They are so understaffed that on some days folks don't get showers. So they may only get one shower per week. On numerous occasions they have left my daughter in bed screaming because they don't have enough staff. Because she is tube fed they think that it's ok to isolate her. My daughter has her own fancy sheets for her bed. I demanded that they change them this week this weeks because it had been 8 weeks since they had been changed. They never ever tell us what they have done to fix problems. My daughter was abused by a nurse in 2015. She was fired. They still won't tell us what happened. They claim they don't know because the residents that reportedchanged their stories. I doubt they fired her based on innuendo yet they won't tell us what happened. Sadly, of the homes that take intellectually disabled Medicaid patients this is the best one. Having a family member at Kindred is a living nightmare.