The Permanente Medical Group Reviews

Pros

i can't think of any.

Cons

Everything. You will regret working at Kaiser. I was working 16 hours a day with mounting stress. Average patient panel size is over 2000 for a primary care MD and they dump more and more patients on you.

Pros

My colleagues are brilliant and very team oriented. As a specialist it is really nice to work with really kind primary care specialists. There are a couple bad eggs who are lazy and pan-refer, but the majority of the PCPs are fantastic to work with. During covid19 I don't think any health plan has pivoted as quickly or efficiently as KP to manage the constantly changing demands of the pandemic. Great pay, benefits and pension plan if you can last 5+ years.

Cons

Beware! Burnout factory. No autonomy. If you prove to be efficient, you are rewarded with more work. Management of ancillary staff is atrocious - often absent and very conniving/manipulative. Oftentimes you are short MA's and you just have to deal with it or have a float who knows nothing about your department. No ability to effect change due to politics, bureaucracy and hierarchy. Patients can email you at all times of day and the expectation is you respond within 24 hours. There is no time to manage your in basket and you see patients every 15 minutes with no staff assistance (no scribes, you do EVERYTHING - ordering, notes, billing). Your bonus is based on patient satisfaction scores so if a patient does not like the way you talked to them, they have a lot of power to make your life miserable. Even if a patient is definitely in the wrong or frankly lying about your service, the company blames you and makes it seem like you are the problem. Also, even if you are a specialist, every year you have to update diagnoses like DM or HTN to make sure they get their reimbursements properly. So even though you are a specialist seeing patients every 15 minutes with patient messages constantly flowing into your in basket, you are expected to look at a patient's x-ray to make sure the diagnosis of "atherosclerosis of the aorta" is correct amongst the 20 other diagnoses you need to refresh. AI should take care of this but physicians are expected to do everything here. If you actually want to practice good medicine and take time with patients, do not work here!

Pros

Excellent electronic medical record, use of technology to manage case load, excellent colleagues, excellent pay, excellent benefits

Cons

High volume, fast pace, direct access for patients ( voice mail, email), management of inbox (patient emails, messages from providers) is time consuming