MedStar Health reviews

3.9

77% would recommend to a friend

(1,773 total reviews)
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Kenneth A. Samet

85% approve of CEO

72% positive business outlook

MedStar Health has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 1,773 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The MedStar Health employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Healthcare industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
2.0
Jan 12, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Of note, this is applicable to PM positions at MedStar HQ in Columbia, MD. I can't speak to what the PM experience is like at other locations/teams. Gain healthcare industry/subject matter knowledge: A decent mid-level view into healthcare fragmentation challenges (mainly at the start of the user funnel, before care is delivered), departments/functions, politics/interests, technical challenges for innovation, and incentives/disincentives. But nothing you couldn't gain at slightly lower quality (but perhaps faster) from books/articles or from working as a consultant in the healthcare space. Gain knowledge of the ecosystem of health tech startups looking to partner/sell into healthcare systems: But mainly focused on the beginning of the funnel and mostly a high level view, you'll be pretty separated from the strategy. Develop/refine your marketing/selling skills; to a point.

Cons

From a PM specific perspective: A lack of individual product manager empowerment/ownership to measurably move the needle over a given product/feature, parts of a journey, outcomes, or organizational buy-in for what that those would require in terms of power-sharing, leadership, and execution from other departments/divisions. Opportunities/problems to be addressed and prioritization are almost all identified at the top (sometimes from outside the group), with no human centered design practices/processes to validate/refine them with internal and external stakeholders (including patients). More of a traditional business analyst role than a product management role. Which impacts roles/responsibilities, skills, processes, frameworks, etc. And there's a general lack of direct first hand experience or knowledge to understand those differences or teach/drive adoption of current state product management practices/frameworks/techniques. Focus on outputs not outcomes. You're directed to quickly work on the delivery of specific solutions (top down), but often the underlying opportunities/problems haven't been fully refined/vetted and the desired solutions often require process/operational changes/change management for which buy-in has not been secured before committing to solutions. There is little/no development in house so you're not building/enhancing anything internally you're usually configuring something to meet specs you were handed. If there's any customization (there usually is) then you're at the mercy of PMs at the vendor/partner to prioritize your needs. Those PMs/vendors are less likely to prioritize that work as it likely hasn't been vetted with day to day users, will require significant refinement from them, and see the next point below. Partner/vendor relationship management focuses on the short term not the long term; obtaining maximum value at the lowest cost. Less thought to defining achievable and measurable success criteria/metrics before committing to addressing an opportunity/problem or in selecting from among potential solutions. Little to no coaching or structured development. Observed patterns of behavior that can adversely impact performance, morale, psychological safety, and retention: Shouting, over-selling (rather than a focus on honest and transparent communication), cliques, shouting, and micromanagement.

3.0
Jul 1, 2022

Run don't Walk!

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great benefits package. Personal days given in addition to federal holidays.

Cons

Low employee engagement, high employee turnover, low productivity, lack of discretionary effort, and low employee morale. These are attributed to the management style at the department I worked. What is worse is that executive leadership is aware and does nothing about it.

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MedStar Health Response
4y
Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective. While we’re glad that you enjoyed our comprehensive benefits package and PTO plan, it’s disheartening to hear that you were not satisfied with other aspects of your employment. We appreciate your taking the time to share your concerns and will surely share them with the most appropriate leaders on our team. We value your feedback and are committed to making improvements that will help our associates succeed.
1.0
Dec 27, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Being a large organization I am able to interact regularly with other specialists/health care providers and learn from them. We have access to medical records from other MedStar Health appointments though there is rarely time to search for records and the application isn't easy to use. MedStar has equipment that most other clinics do not: ZeroG, exoskeleton, driver rehab simulations, a working kitchen. If there is a medical emergency, which happens frequently, we can call a rapid response and medical teams will be over in about 5 min. There is very generous time off though it accrues painfully slow. There is no deductible, low premiums, and low copays for the MedStar Health appointments though it can take hours to schedule health appointments. MedStar has maternal and childcare benefits too. Patients are seen one on one and the expectation is 7 patients or 30 units/day (which is surprisingly rarely met as no show/cancellation rate is about 30% due to systemic barriers and almost all patients are Medicare or Medicaid). We have patient insurance specialists and schedulers to assist clinicians.

Cons

What they say and what they do are entirely opposite. The management cares about profits over anything else and profits come before patients and definitely before associates. Therefore, turnover and burnout is a significant issue. We had 8 people leave in just 1 month and they can never hire quickly enough so remaining clinicians are stuck scrambling. They don't take any accountability in turnover and instead say the clinicians "lost their passion." They tend to replace incredibly skilled clinicians with new grads despite treating the most medically and socially complex patients and therefore clinicians are put in a vulnerable position where they have to treat complicated patients without mentorship. Management is quick to throw clinicians under the bus in front of patients and their families even if they were not present for the event in question. You are expected to be available at all times to take patients and often you are given other evals or treatments when patients do not show. Patients often come incredibly late or on the wrong day and nobody is supposed to be turned away so someone is supposed to see them. The DEI group EPIC is given no real power and associates of color are treated so poorly. Microaggressions and macroaggressions are everywhere. The management takes zero accountability for unsafe/uncomfortable situations or systemic barriers to care and blames clinicians or patients for everything. I had a patient fall because MedStar failed to notify patients of construction. My director said that because the patient has fallen before and nobody made them walk through the grass, that MedStar had no responsibility. When you ask for help you are ridiculed, scoffed at and shamed. They reward poor leadership and poor ethics and punish innovation. They are reactive instead of proactive and often action takes months to years if it ever comes. There are tons of extra job duties without being given time to do them like peer reviews every quarter (have to read all of the notes for a Medicare and non-Medicare caseload and fill out a long survey about it to rate each other's documentation), being a part of a committee to make improvements to operations, tracking and reporting productivity manually. They rarely monetarily reward hard work (if you get a good Google review, which most patients cannot figure out how to do, then you are entered in a raffle to earn $10; you get $15 for every extra patient seen but it is nearly impossible with our cancellation rates; almost everyone gets the standard 3% raise each year since only 2 can get a 6% raise and the past two years they haven't done that due to COVID.) They do not track COVID cases among outpatient patients or associates so that they can brag that there was no transmission of COVID-19 anywhere in the network ever during the pandemic despite many of my colleagues and I getting it. For the longest time we were not even able to get tested if we were asymptomatic. They care more about optics than true safety.

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