Advocate Health Care Reviews

Pros

-Engaged Staff
-Great development opportunities
-Always looking to the future to try new things and be different as an organization

Cons

-The organization is split into silos and it is sometimes hard to find the right person to work with but once you find the correct person it's amazing the things we accomplish.

Pros

great company, people are nice and supportive. team I work with is awesome and so supportive. have a great manangement team

Cons

feel like you are always trying to catching up with reports. can be a bit overwhelming with so many changes

Pros

Benefits offered
Medical outcomes and highly educated effective medical staff

Cons

Managers are looking out for their own best interests and locked into positions with no accountability. Non MD medical staff are treated harshly, overworked and under appreciated. Salary increases are minimized while profits have never been higher at Advocate. MD's are given bonuses and kick backs while medical staff is overlooked. Benefits have strings attached, want to use your medical HMO benefits use a Advocate facility or you pay out of your own pocket. Exempt employees are forced to use PTO to cover any time off even when sent home low census. Wellness center memberships for employees require fights each year for renewals, RN's are dropping medical orders for services beyond they're scope of knowledge and to the public these orders appear to be written by MD's. Cost saving measures are changing what used to be a leader in health care to a shadow of what it used to be and quick discharges of patients appear to be the new standard of care. This appears to be an issue throughout health care but more is expected from Advocate.

Advice to Senior Management

Medical staff at Advocate often do not feel like management is interested in hearing true feedback. A do not rock the boat philosophy has staff fearful of reprisals for trying to effectively fix the problems that do exist. Leaders in Healthcare need to give employees the tools they need to succeed. The entrenched middle management at Advocate does not appear to provide value to the patients we serve or the medical staff.
Do the right thing, value employees and patients by reinvesting hospital profits back into employee benefits, pay, hospital facilities and equipment for the patients we serve. Limit wasteful middle management and even VP level positions. How many $100,000+ positions do we need for people who do not provide patient care. Make sure qualified MD's evaluate patients and drop orders not RN's, unless Advocate is willing to disclose these practices to the public openly to allow customers the right to informed consent.

Pros

Pay is ok but benefits aren't good.

Cons

The mgmt and employees don't treat eachother with respect and no growth at all.

Advice to Senior Management

none

Pros

good benefits and pay and many great employees for the most part that work hard and care very much about the patients

Cons

need better managers and supervisors that need to recognize their employees for the work they do and be more approachable and more compassionate instead of taking them for granted and wish those that take the lead would use what they learn in all those meetings they attend on management

Advice to Senior Management

no comment

Pros

Cutting Edge Healthcare
Great Patient Outcomes
Good Management
Good Benefits

Cons

Sometimes get lost in the shuffle of being in an organization that is so large.

Pros

Well positioned for the future

Cons

HR has a very limited view of "carryover" skills. The company has a stated value of growing from within that it does not practice. This seems to be a disconnect between Senior leadership and HR.

Advice to Senior Management

Practice what you preach on growth from within the ranks.

Pros

*Good compensation/benefit package for full time associates
*Reasonable opportunities to advance for associates, as long as you are willing to relocate
*Highest level management seems to care for associates, VP level down seem to focus more on personal advancement/gain

Cons

*VERY awards driven, great talk, but management needs to practice what they preach more.
*Not a lot of support for non-clinical staff, little if any additional training offered, and frequently left to figure things out on your own
*Layoffs for financial reasons are frequently disguised as "poor performance terminations" in order to keep reputation of being financially sound. Creates poor morale among employees.
*Fear factor that if you do not two the line and join the praise team, you will lose your job (not good in this economy)

Advice to Senior Management

Quit constantly introducing the management technique of the day (LEAN and Studer) and dumping so much time and money on award pursuits that mean little to the communities served. Spend the money used in pursing popularity contests on better in-patient care. Watch your upper management closer, there is a lot more internal favoritism and politicking going on at those levels then acknowledged, and it gets very discouraging to those caught in the trenches. Managers love it, we don't!

Pros

Above average educational support, pension plan and 401 k employer match 3% average, excellent organizational structure.

Cons

Above average hospital case loads, crowded work environment, average to below average salary and compensation related to educational and work experience level. Minimal patient lift equipment in facility increases staff risk for injury with repetitive lifting of increasingly overweight and immobile patient population.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve staff compensation related to educational level and experience level. Improve work environment for patients and staff with private rooms and adequate staff to patient ratios. Avoid growth for the sack of growth without addressing these primary patient and staff issues.

Pros

Advocate is a great company to work for. Senior leadership is very progressive and ensures that we are always pursuing the best possible outcomes for our patients. They ensure that pay is competitive with the market and provide opportunities for career growth and development.

Cons

Sometimes leadership initatives can seem like the "flavor of the month" and something conflicting will be implemented on top of something else that is already in place.