OptumInsight Reviews in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Area

Pros

growth oportunity in this company is excellent

Cons

similar to other employers, sometimes the worst part about working here is the competency level of coworkers

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to promote talented individuals

Pros

Nice Location in Eden Prairie, MN
Good Food at the Cafetaria

Cons

Metrics
Quality suffers due to Quantity/Volume - people who cheat the system though can "fly by" the radar
Leadership - ALL female middle management whose expectations and assistance varies
Extra work - "Required" overtime
Lack of Advancement, Pay, Bonus, Rewards...
Poor (deficient) Benefits for a Healthcare Company!
High Turnover - always short team members, so more work for others

Advice to Senior Management

New Middle Management - revised goals based on reality, not construed numbers and take into account the unpaid OT salaried ee's 'have' to work - operate at full staff - turnover is extremely high for such a profitable part of the business...

Pros

Ingenix is an industry leader with a good reputation

Cons

Communication has been lacking, particularly among business units in United Health. Top-Down run organization that feels very impersonal.

Advice to Senior Management

continue communication directly to employees

Pros

Large company with a diverse culture and sizable career growth opportunities. The company has embraced telecommuting and lots of employees take advantage of this opportunity. Ingenix has several offices across United States, UK and India.

Cons

As with most large companies, it is difficult to get things done quickly. Looking back at my time spent working for a smaller company, I realized just how much more efficiently one can operate in a small company.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep communicating with the employees any chance you get. And not just when it is convenient or when there are good news to report. It is just as important to keep the dialog with employees flowing even when the company faces uncertainty in the marker or falls into difficult financial times.

Pros

Organization has one of the largest accumulations of intelligent people in the industry.

Cons

No alignment, the company exists to support UnitedHealthcare and Uniprise (other UHG companies get a "pass" on working with Ingenix and don't), the industry dislikes the UHG relationship and that impedes the true value, and UHG treats its employees like sled dogs (if you pull the sled fast - you get an extra piece of meat. if the sled tips over - one/many of you will be shot and discarded).

Advice to Senior Management

Run it like a separate business - stop living off the mothership and focus on the industry.

Pros

Ingenix is an ever growing and changing organization focused on improving healthcare through advanced analytics. As a result of the constant change and growth, there are frequent opportunities to evolve and grow individually.

Cons

As with all organization similarly sized to Ingenix and their parent company UnitedHealth Group, ingenuity can sometimes pose as difficult due to unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy resulting from the internal desire to remain stagnant or maintain statuesque.

Advice to Senior Management

Don’t just talk the talk. Truly live the mission of healing health care together through intelligence for health care.

Pros

Generally good, hardworking people at the company.

Cons

At its heart, it's a health-care IT division instead of a high-tech software company. The quarterly demands of meeting parent UnitedHealth Group's numbers discourage investment spanning more than one or two quarters.

Advice to Senior Management

Perhaps Ingenix would be better as an independent company.

Pros

Interesting projects; smart co-workers; health care is an important area. We are involved in a variety of important activities from pharmaceutical research to health care effectiveness, to forecasting future cost and utilization of medical services. We build software, we do primary research, we provide expert consultation to insurance companies, hospitals, health care providers and employers. We attract very smart, experienced, highly educated people who are committed to their work: physicians, epidemiologists, actuaries, health services researchers, software architects and engineers, programmers and dba's. The environment is collaborative since most projects required a variety of skill sets to complete. The culture values hard work.

Cons

Top-down management style; short-term focus at the expense of long-term planning; disrespectful culture. Ingenix, a subsidiary of United Healthcare, is extremely, extremely focused on near-term financial results. The emphasis is to never, never miss the numbers expected by Wall Street. This attitude permeates every aspect of the business. In a company such as Ingenix that requires investment in technology, research and development as well as innovation, there is insufficient willingness to make reasonable investment today for pay-off tomorrow. This results in fits and starts of activity as previously approved budgets and projects are canceled or delayed. There is also a lack of respect from senior management to other employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Walk the talk. The Ingenix Code is an excellent set of principles but I am tired of hearing about it on monthly management calls and still experience a lack of respect for the time, abilities and efforts of rank and file employees. Employees frequently work in a state of ignorance or ambiguity waiting for some decision to be made, for some order to be issued, for some new process to be implemented. While Ingenix should be flexible, innovative and quick to market the culture is still that of an old, sluggish insurance company. The company is run top-down. Managers are given responsibility without authority. Their judgments are second-guessed or ignored. To use an over-used term, senior management micro manages way, way too much.

Pros

The best reasons for working at Ingenix are the opportunities to meet skilled and educated individuals that you wouldn't usually have much contact with if the company was larger.

Cons

On the flip-side of the best reasons would be the people who joined the ranks because they were/are buddies with the boss or they share an alternative lifestyle or they give good hairstyling tips. The worst offenders are the people who have been with the company for a few years but back-stab if they think you are going to get something more from the company than they did. The employers are too impressed with titles and grade levels rather than checking on whether the individual has really risen to that status. A more thorough background check needs to be done to check the credentials of the people holding investigator jobs. Just because someone claims to have 30 years of experience, does not necessarily mean they are any good at the job it just indicates they are complacent and found an comfortable job niche.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to who you have doing this type of work. Do a spot audit on supervisors, managers, and the actual employees and check to see if they are really credentialed or are blowing smoke. Do a real background check and actually review if you should be laying claim to having the best and the brightest when you really should be saying you've got mediocre and just plan lucky individuals.