Kaiser Permanente reviews

When the decision to turn KP Mid Atlantic into a profit center the current CEO understood increase number of paying patients and appointment slots available, not improve on internal management processes. As a result attrition rate is now 5 times higher in Mid Atlantic than other KP locations because of unrealistic expectations placed on physicians' shoulders. Unlike other KP locations last patient booking is later during the day and there is no specific time dedicated to administrative work by physicians. Thus, even experienced doctors end up working late in the evening, sometimes up to 9 pm. Furthermore, the current workload management is so mothers' unfriendly that many female doctors have resigned. This is obvious when you look at the gender imbalance among physicians which is currently heavily skewed towards male doctors.

Level of work surveillance high (everything you do is on a computer and every 5th patient is sent a questionnaire regarding their experience) A very female work environment - majority of primary care physicians female-and much of the upper management (great if you are a female) A very hyphenated environment e.g. many of the employees are x-Americans (fill in the x with your favorite group i.e. Chinese, African, Philippine and dare I say it: female-American) These tend to affiliate with one another although some like the Phillipino's and Vietnamese are very accepting of outsiders. If you are just a plain vanilla- raised in America of polyglot European extraction lacking an extra x chromosome you can end up feeling like you lack a certain type of cultural/gender mojo. New hires tend to get taken advantage of (i.e. have extra work surreptitiously pawned off on them) because it takes years to become aware of all the little arcane scheduling rules etc and also years to realize that at Kaiser saying no to something you don't want to do is usually ok if you are otherwise a valued employee. Many physicians are hired into the management ranks (mostly xx chromosomes with kids who enjoy the flexibility there admin hours provide) and in general physicians make very poor and expensive managers (i.e. society paid usually hundreds of thousands of dollars to educate someone to be a physician and then they end up doing vacation schedules) because they tend to be both competitive and defensive; not by nature but by way of the acculturation process by which one becomes a practicing physician. Ancillary staff is all unionized and that is a very different environment then most physicians practice in. The typical status hierarchies are upended. As a physician at Kaiser you can be fired but once past the probation period a union employee has to do something like steal from the company before they can be let go; being unable or unwilling to do your job is not enough. If you are a low status specialty (primary care) then you almost certainly will have one of these employees foisted on your department because the surgeons don't have to put up with it. You will have to bow and scrape to these incompetents because to do otherwise is suicide-remember they can be written up for being on their cell phone constantly but they can't be fired. So you will find yourself saying things like gosh I can see your busy (medical assistant on cell phone) but I was wondering if you could do x for Mrs. Y. Primary care has devolved into managing cholesterol levels and hemoglobin A1Cs and other health maintenance tests because Kaiser is very intent on having the best HEDIS scores. This emphasis tends to attenuate other general practice medical skills like lancing a boil (often referred to surgery) or examining a knee (immediate referral to ortho).