Banner Health Reviews in Phoenix, AZ Area

Pros

Seeing other employees enjoying their job.. Walking into work wanting to be there. Knowing there will be someone to cheer me up and help me when I need it. Having supportive co-workers and cooperative volunteers. Patient's needs come first and patients don't always show their appreciation, but working at Banner Thunderbird you are almost guaranteed a word or two of encouragement and support.

Cons

Location of the facility is not best. I don't like parking in the garage especially at night. The neighborhood is not a safe neighborhood to walk around at night, especially a few blocks south of the hospital. Patient morale is low due to lack of funds to help support their treatments.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to encourage your peers. Continue to allow for advancement and support for hard efforts during those critical times when things are being crunched due to the lack of space.

Pros

Big company, opportunity for lateral moves and growth potential. They honored our years of service and time off accural, except for our sick time that we had all accrued for years, that went down the toilet. They seem to have similar interests in patient care, meeting the needs of the patient first. Shouldn't all healthcare systems do this, though?

Cons

With such a large organization, communication and getting everyone on the same page can be a huge challenge. They sent us this huge compensation package to explain our new benefits that we had to sign up for when the merger happened. Then right after we signed up, I mean about 1 week later, they cut costs to everyone in the company and took away benefits that we promised not just to us, but to their own long-time employees as well. We ended up with less time off per year, short-term disability was only 66% of our paycheck, not 100%, tuition reimbursement was effected, raises were effected. I suppose this is better than layoffs, of course, but even with these budget cuts and the others that we are implementing at this time, they still waste money with paper products and promotional crap! I get post-cards in the mail about nothing, could have been sent in an email. The patients get a color folder of promotional material about Banner when they are admitted, I can't tell you how many of them don't look at it and even leave it in the room after they are discharged! If they want the patients to have a better experience, take better care of the staff so they are happy and it's easier to take care of the patients. Trustme, a well fed, well peed nurse who has been listened to is much better than a bitter, hungry, low blood-sugared, full-bladdered RN with a list of complaints to management and they are always at "meetings."

Advice to Senior Management

Stop the micromanaging, just let us take care of our patients the way we were instead of these clinical team leaders telling us how and when to do things. I have a brain and critical thinking skills and I can tell when my patient's anxiety level is through the roof, so if putting off the IV until after the SVN treatment will work better for a patient, get off my back and let me handle it!

Pros

Large size company with locations in several different states and opportunities exist to transfer between hospitals. My experience is limited to the Phoenix metro area but I would like to say we have modern facilities with quality equipment to do our jobs.

Cons

Micromanagement can be a problem when 3 or 4 different managers have to talk to you about the same issue. Recently management has came up with "cost cutting measures" that are supposed to "guide the company through the country's economic downturn." The vast majority of these are cutting or eliminating employee benefits. Examples include cutting tuition reimbursement for employees who were not enrolled in a degree program prior to 2009, cutting how quickly employees that have been with the company more than 3 years accrue paid time off, eliminating the option of cashing out your earned paid time off, decreasing the amount of pay for short term disability, too much contracted labor (travel nurses, etc.) has recently become a problem when the regular staff members cannot even work their full time hours and have to use paid time off to receive a full paycheck.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't punish employees who have stuck with or planned on sticking with the company by cutting benefits. Quit hiring so many travel nurses when your regular staff can't even work their own hours.

Pros

Staffing ratios are good. Many great people to work with and learn from. Banner also has great training resources.

Cons

Recent reduction in employee benefits, i.e., disallowment of ANY degree starts in Jan. or Feb. 2009 --even if it is a nursing degree. I think this is not very wise of management, especially considering all the money wasted on corporate catering and other things that don't contribute to patient care.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't cut tuition benefits - this will surely lead to employee churn. --Hiring and training new employees is usually substantially more costly than retaining current ones. Additionally, isn't it better to have more educated employees helping the patients? Eliminate excessive spending in areas that won't alienate employees and reduce the ability of employees to excel in delivering excellent patient care.

Pros

Passion, Compassion and mission work. Banner Health is a non-profit hospital and medical system that is strong in delivering on the mission of ..."delivering on excellent patient care. The values of People first, Excellence and Results work together to support the noble effort. This is a relatively young organization, only about 8 years old and grown from a merger of Lutheran System and the Samaritan System. The largest presence is in the Valley of the Sun and specifically the metro Phoenix area. Being able to work for an organization that really does put people first is refreshing. While there is still room for improvement in every organization, Banner is definitely on the right track.

Cons

It's difficult being a non-profit since raising capital to support the many initiatives and endeavors is a little difficult. In these tough economic, political, and social times, being a non-profit hospital system is a double edge sword. You want to help, but it sometimes effects what projects can get done. Senior management has done a great job of positioning Banner to make it through the various cycles, but no one predicted this one would be so deep and a such a problem. With all the hype about healthcare in the upcoming election, it has put the brakes on many of the initiatives in all non-profit hospital systems, not just Banner.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the faith! The employees in this organization really care about the patients and about each other. While it may not always be so evident, these employees are compassionate and want to do what's best for Banner and for their co-workers. They donate their PTO and their dollars to help a myriad of causes. Senior Management can continue to listen to the employees and take their suggestions to heart. Banner has a lot to offer.

Pros

My coworkers are fun, hardworking and knowledgeable. We have great variety in the cases that we operate on, so it's a great place to learn your basics and to specialize, should you choose to. The operating room managers can be good at helping people to grow and learn more. some of them see us as individuals and are able to visualize what might be helpful to expand an employee's skill set, and comfort level in more areas. A big part of the culture is based upon being empathetic to what patient's and their families are going through, and looking to see what each of us could do to ease their journey.

Cons

Pay is lower than other hospitals, there is the mindset here that is common to so many health care operations; we health care workers should go all out and give everything we've got to help the public, without any selfish thoughts of how we need to take care of ourselves financially. Florence Nightingale wouldn't be bringing up salary comparisons, now would she?!?! Parking is difficult, I have to arrive earlier and earlier just to cover the amount of time and distance it takes to park, especially in the winter. The call pay is $3 an hour--that's $3 dollars an hour to rearrange and crimp your life and put it at the beck and call of the company 2-3 weekdays, and one 12 hour weekend day/night a month.

Advice to Senior Management

Act sympathetic, even if you can't do something to change the dynamics, pretend like you're sorry that they exist, ie; if we are understaffed, and there are no breaks being given, at least pretend that you are sorry that those are the circumstances. Narrow the divide between the rhetoric regarding the sanctity of the patient's wellbeing, and the treatment of the needs of your staff. We NEED to eat, drink and pee, we are not machines. If you want to cultivate our caring for the patient's experience, it's much easier if our blood sugar is level and we are not thrown into survival. It's ok to tell surgeons no, we can't accomodate your elective surgery at 4pm, we can probably swing that at 5:30. Breaks are necessary for ALL shifts.

Pros

They truly care about patient care and, to some extent, employee engagement. There is opportunity to grow and to learn. There are a lot of smart, caring people working there and it's a pleasure to work with them. Also, I felt it was a reputablee company that I felt pretty good about working at. It was my first foray into the healthcare industry and I'm definitely sold on making healthcare a career for the duration. It has its challenges but certainly has its rewards.

Cons

Now that I'm out, I see that it's really not that bad. One thing they're bad at is leadership development. They put people in management positions before they're ready and their direct reports certainly pay for it.

Advice to Senior Management

I wolud say that management needs to get our of their offices more and get to know their poeple on a personal level. With the shortage of nurses and medical professionals today, it's critical to have a personal relationship with your employees at the very least. That's something management doesn't do well there.

Pros

Letting staff make decisions on thier own without having to worry about someone micromanaging them. Allowing staff to admit and learn from errors without retaliation and keeping staff updated on all aspects of not only thier job but others within the coorporation as well.

Cons

On a personal level I still need to have a 2nd job although I have a professional degree and make a good salary. The cost of living makes it hard to pay a student loan and live and work with only one job.

Advice to Senior Management

I feel you all do great but being more open to employees and having more educational opourtunities such as CEUs for professionals would be great

Pros

location and nationwide locations provide opportunity to explore other positions in the company

Cons

high patient to nurse ration, high acuity involved with high patient to nurse ration

Advice to Senior Management

treat your nurses fairly and compensate them for making your company as successful as it is

Pros

With locations in 7 states, there are lots of opportunities to change jobs/locations but stay with the company. It's a health care company, but there are jobs in non-clinical areas like IT, finance, administrative support roles and the like if you don't work in a direct patient care role. In addition the the bigger facilities in the Phoenix-metropolitan area, there are some locations in small, rural communities (where I started).

Cons

These aren't necessarily downsides, but you need to be comfortable working in a large organization where some functions are centralized, and you must be comfortable with change and growth.

Advice to Senior Management

I appreciate the opportunities to grow and develop with the company, as I started years ago in a clerical role and was able to move into other jobs over the years.