Kaiser Permanente Employee Review

Former Employee – worked at Kaiser Permanente

Pros – good benefits--although, as a higher earner, one does have to pay taxes on the imputed value of the benefits.
stable salary structure.
get 1/2 day per week off in Southern California
good way of getting training after completing residency before moving on to bigger and better things

Cons – Very bureaucratic and intensely political environment.

All promotions are based largely on seniority.

Managerial hires must often be approved by union leadership.

The union leadership often paralyzes the organization.

SCPMG has legions of administrators, both physician and non-physician, who sit around, criticize, pontificate and add no value to the organization.

Physicians have little to no autonomy in shaping their own work processes and no control over the unionized support staff.

The unionized support staff are often thuggish and are not held accountable for their actions

I was stuck in a department that was perceived to be of little import to the hospital and medical group. Thus, I did not get the support that I needed. The physician chief of service did not care for either myself or my colleague, perceiving us as a means for him to escape into administrative functions. The non-physician department administrator was weak, ineffectual and unsupportive.

The salary structure is based SOLELY on seniority. There are no rewards given for productivity or revenue brought in. Thus, SCPMG retains older, less productive physicians who find ways to spend their time performing administrative functions.

Inappropriate usage of patient satisfaction surveys often discouraged integrity in the arenas of disability management and opioid prescriptions. While I would not cater to malingerers or drug seekers, I saw colleagues who did both, to preserve their patient satisfaction ratings.

Advice to Senior Management – Empower individual physicians.
Alter the salary structure to reward higher performers and more productive physicians.
Allow the partner physicians some say in organizational decisions, small and large.
Slowly begin replacing unionized positions with non-union positions.
Alter the

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend