Gentiva

I know of one person who worked for them in PA, he hated it. Said the pay was poor, and workload unreasonable.

Mind you, this is heresay.

Please PM me. I don't want to post that type of stuff to the public. RUN :uhoh21:

renerian

I have known a couple of nurses who tried to work for them and said they were difficult to work for. Pay was low, unsteady flow of work, and in areas they did not want to go. No real experience with them myself .

I decided I can post a few things here that are objective and not subjective. I worked for Kimberly Quality Care/anyone remember them. I loved it. Worked there as a case manager over 2 years in addition to working my full time hospital job.

Olsten/Gentiva by name now- bought Kimberly and since there was an Olsten office and a Kimberly office in the same city, they swore it would be fine -no job loss. UH that is not what happened. The new company then came along and said, yes your office is closing but we will make room for you in our office/Olsten. Uh then they closed our office and did not give one person in our organization/local office a job. So .........there you go.

If you want more information PM me.

renerian :angryfire

Hi all, I work as an RN for Gentiva and I've been with them since this past sept. I have been an RN for more than 25 years now and been doing HH for over 7 years and Gentiva here in AZ. is about the same as the rest I have worked for. I'm full time salary w benefits and I make over 50,000 salary and after I do 27 visits in a week I get the per-diem rate. There salaries are about the same as other HHA in this area and I find there supers and others just as nice as any I have worked with at other HHA. I have done my share of management and office work in the past and I decided that I like the independence of being in the field. Too much crap and politics when you sit in an office all day.

I think it depends on the area you are covering--I have a friend who works for Gentiva,she says she is paid very well and after two years of working for them,is now able to choose her assignment. She says she had to move to an area that Gentiva was having a difficult time covering but she was given relocation expenses. Because she kept telling me how great it was to work for Gentiva--I applied at an office where I live......the pay scale quoted was terrible and they seemed unorganized. Our experiences were very different!

Happy to see this thread!

Does anyone out there know about Gentiva in Sacramento, CA? I have an interview with them on Tuesday, and an alternative offer as well. One question I have is re: "unreasonable workload". How do you define that? I do have prior HHC experience, and during the go-go years in the early 90's was making 40+ visits a week.

My alternative offer is with Interim's home health agency -- not their staffing agency. Any info about them would be nifty, too.

You guys are beginning to scare me. I had decided to approach large, national HHC companies because when I left HHC the smaller ones were scrambling for visits and dropping like flies. I figured the larger ones would be more stable, predictable, etc.

Personnaly I think they have very lengthy paperwork. The days of 40 visits are pretty much gone due to increased paperwork for skilled patients. Their office closed here/no able to survive. Could not find nurses who would work for the stinkey rate.

Alot of nurses like interim but I think their pay rate is stinkey as well.

renerain

I worked for Kimberly Quality Care many many yrs ago. I left the company before Gentiva bought them/changed their name.

I do have a friend who went to work for Gentiva last year. Oh the stories she told me :uhoh21:

One flat rate for mileage, (I think it was $2.50) added to each visit, which the visit rate was lower than any I have seen. No help from office staff, was given 2 days of orientation and sent off on her own. She left after 2 wks. After she left, surveyors came in on a patient complaint and found numerous issues that caused many other questions to be raised about the company.

Thanks for the replies, so quick!

Well, rats. When I left HHC around 5 years ago, OASIS paperwork had been implemented and PPS, so I'm not sure if the paperwork burden is increased now in comparison with then. The rates for about every place I worked at the time were $35 per visit, mileage at the then-standard IRS rate, and $50 per open.

Now, what I'm seeing is $40 per visit and $60 per open, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

I think I'm gonna have to call my last agency on Monday and see what they have to offer now, before I jump to conclusions that a national company is more stable and offers better benefits.

So, is making 35 visits per week just really crazy, if they're all in the same geographic area and if there are a couple "opens" in there? My time management skills were always considered excellent, and I never thought the paperwork was bad until OASIS, despite people complaining about it.

If your in a geographic area 35 is reasonable if your spread all over God's green earth it is not.

renerian

Trying to be objective, but also going into the meeting with the cautions given here clearly in mind:

The office environment was quiet, calm, yet seemed supportive. Very professional. The area for field staff to document, etc. was satisfactory, but did not have any individual desks or booths. Since I like to do paperwork in the OFFICE as opposed to my home, that was a negative.

The expectation was 6 visits per day for full-time. They pay an hourly salary, and they break down opens, recerts and driving time into various percentages of 6 visits per day. (This seems reasonable, but is influenced by ...)

All staff begins the day at 8am in the office, where they review their assignments for the day with the Clinical Sup. (negative)

The reimbursement rate is $0.30 per mile. (negative)

The coverage area for the agency extends beyond Sacramento by about 20 or 30 miles, and Sacramento itself is quite a large area to cover. (negative)

While there is an agreement as to what zip code areas one will cover, there is the expectation that if someone calls in sick, others WILL cover their areas. (negative)

Their benefits include health coverage that will end up costing me about $200 per month as my share, and since I presently pay for my own coverage at $320 per month, that is really not much incentive.

Their PTO plan averages "about 10 hours per month" of time off. That includes sick time and vacation time, and it is not very competitive in my estimation. Full time hospital positions in this area offer about twice that in PTO, and my first HHC job in Sacramento back in 1993, I earned 6 weeks of PTO per year.

Hourly rate for my 7 years of HHC experience is $36, which is about $3 less than what I earned at a full-time staff position in the hospital. It seems about right, maybe even a little higher than what I could make on a per visit pay scale.

Here's my take on it, though. One of the things I value about HHC is the autonomy. I am really concerned about placing the ability to control my own daily workload and schedule into the hands of a supervisor. Especially when I'm the one who will be managing the case in every other way. I foresee that "emergencies" dictating that I drive out into the boonies, or do mostly opens and management while an LVN does revisits, will be more likely.

This is a real subjective point, as in reality any agency can/will ask you to do inconvenient things, and of course you will negotiate and end up doing some of them. But there's a big difference between being asked, and being mandated. And it's hard to define, and nothing that anyone said outright, but I got the feeling that their concern is that their staff be working up to their expectations -- and not that they will be able to meet the expectations of their staff.

There's just a big difference in taking on that extra open, or visit, and knowing you'll get paid the per visit rate.

So, at present, I am leaning towards Interim.