Ladles of Kool-Aid - Anonymous employee DaVita Employee Review

DaVita's CEO is the highest paid in this category of healthcare companies. He is a handsome, brilliant public relations master, and he has an insatiable appetite for applause. DaVita has learned how to use soaring language, megatrons and constant propaganda to substitute for 401K match, for promotion from within, for diversity in management, and most importantly, for staffing dialysis clinics well enough to minimize clinical error and allow nurses to do the patient care that would live up to the core values, which become painful to hear after about 3 years in the company. DaVita abuses the facility managers to the point that the most competent, patient-centered RNs would never take the job, and when they do, they go back to the floor after a few years, realizing the rhetoric was hollow and they are going to be pounded relentlessly to compromise patient care. To stoke the ego of the CEO, DaVita has begun to recruit regional managers from Stanford and Harvard who have no medical background or professional medical ethics--giving Kent Thiry (or KT) the opportunity to pretend he's Steve Jobs mentoring tomorrow's business tycoons. KT has a genius for PR, getting flattering profiles published in newspapers, mobilizing employees to vote for him in various industry polls, getting employees to do charity walks for the PAC DaVita used to oppose healthcare reform. It is well known that he has amassed a tremendous fortune he says he plans to use benevolently to run for public office. DaVita created a second PAC that was supposedly patient-driven to lobby for dialysis patients, but strangely, sent no messages to members to contact congress during healthcare reform debates, in spite of the importance of the donut hole and pre-existing condition clauses for dialysis patients. DaVita also requires employees to make special reports on the satisfaction level and disposition of its patients with the highest tiers of insurance reimbursement. Employees can be fired for allowing one of these patients to transfer to a competitor without alerting management. People who thrive in DaVita are those who learn to manipulate the rhetoric, either sincerely or cynically, to conform with the themes of upper management. That ability is prized more highly than hard work, intelligence, commitment, and certainly more than concern for patient care--and nothing is more honored that professions of admiration for the CEO. The rhetoric keeps clinical workers, nurses and technicians, off balance--as if the MBAs are the ones with the most rigorous commitment to high quality medical care, and seduces naive people into thinking DaVita is a benevolent organization so that no unionization is needed. The clinics themselves have a brutal, unforgiving pace for employees and facility managers. Since the recession, DaVita's profits have grown each quarter as it cut back salaries, raises, and bonuses and reduced benefits, especially, ironically, health insurance for employees. A typical RN with two children will pay out of pocket deductibles over $3,000 a year before the benefits kick in, and that's on top of paycheck deductions. When challenged about the lack of 401K matching at company rallies, Mr. Thiry is able to cry actual tears reading a letter from a "teammate" who said he could not afford to save in the 401K and so would miss matching benefits if they were available to others.