ct technologist

mri technologist

health screener

nuclear medicine technologist

medical receptionist

Akumin

For those who work in healthcare, many do so because they enjoy helping others. Alliance Imaging provides diagnostic imaging services to various hospitals and clinics, from busy metropolitan sites to rural clinics. These services allows patients to access care that they would otherwise be challenged to find. The technologists (like myself) and patient coordinators love our work and are willing to travel extensive distances to provide our services. 

Alliance, though, is a healthcare organization which has a primary focus on the bottom line. While the individuals on the management team may be good people, they are obligated to maximize profits for the shareholders. To this end, I have seen many senior technologists let go without reason and other technologists have their hours drastically reduced. At sites requiring a 2-3 man team, the regular second technologist has been replaced by another (less expensive) patient coordinator, leaving one tech to absorb the increased workload and radiation exposure. Similarly, if the workload for a particular site/day is light (1-3 patients), only 1 technologist may be scheduled to work the site without any assistance. This is major risk for technologists who are exposed to patient safety issues (sick/handicapped/uncooperative patients) as well as professional liabilities (fraudulent abuse or harrassment claims) as no one else is there to support or defend them.

While Alliance Imaging offers great services for patients, it is the employees that deliver that care and service. The opportunity to work with newer technology and excellent healthcare professionals is fantastic. This is dampened, though, by the bureaucratic attitude imposed on middle management by executives who seem more loyal to their shareholders than to the employees...err, I mean "team members" (as they strongly wish to emphasize that the company is a team working together).

Let’s see where can I start at? I was hired as an authorizations specialist. Liked it a lot but things took a turn for the worst. I have to admit the pay is not there! This is just a temporary job! Ask anyone on the team and they would agree this is a stepping stone for a better job. Sure you get experience but at what cost? We have so much to do. Thousands of emails back to back! Authorizations that we have to do all day long while calls are rolling in. You can be in the middle of an authorization and a call comes in. You totally forget what you’re doing because you have to answer calls, then an email comes in that you have to answer in 30 minutes then here comes a call back from a PCP office about a referral you called about oh but wait then you get another call while you get another email about a stat request! I can’t take it anymore. It’s too much. I’m frazzled. The team is frazzled. Granted the job does say auths and emails. But no where in my job description did it say ANSWER PHONE CALLS ALL DAY LONG. I’ve screwed up a good bit of authorizations taking calls in between then because I forget what I’m doing. Managements bright idea to add this to our already tedious list of tasks and productivity that is CRAZY WILD! 100+ auths a day is the requirement! You want us to do 100 auths a day error free? Most of us are rushing through it. You have to to meet the quota they’re asking for with the calls. Sure the team is meeting your quota but at the cost of accuracy I guaruntee it! I don’t have time to even make sure I’m adding the right notes to the authorization at this point. I just add whatever I can. This job sucks now! Take my advice and don’t get a job here if you want something mild paced. If you want something stressful with stressful quotas to meet and a bunch of calls to take then apply here. I would have never applied to this job if I knew inbound calls would be the job. Never! I know my limitations and I know what I want in a job and this was not on the job description ask anyone working here. And the raise does not equate to the amount of work we do just know the raise is less than a dollar oh yeah I have interviews lined up. We all do so save yourself if you don’t want to take calls this isn’t the job don’t let them sucker you in

The work/life balance is trash. Management only cares if there is coverage, but since I have worked here there has never been any assistance with coverage. It is a struggle to get days off to handle anything and often may still have to work when you're sick. The technologists are very entitled and disrespectful. The environment is like high school. The people talk bad about you and there's always drama and you CANNOT trust anyone at your job with any information that is personal or it'll be the talk of the office. Others try to bully or intimidate because of their long term experience at the job or micromanage you. People don't respect others and things are unfair. 

It is nice to meet the amazing different people that are sometimes the highlight of your day.  The company and technologists overlook great patients who are in need of service and assistance and let the" Karens," or difficult patients with connections get serviced first or get accommodated cause they do not want trouble. 

The place has not offered one raise since I have worked here and the only benefit is maybe making a bonus depending on your management and team. All this company cares about is making money and for "numbers," to be correct so if their metrics are not met you won't get a bonus every month and there is barely overtime and your hours are always changing.

The management is never around and often times when a patient is turned away or upset there is no one there to deescalate problems so you get cursed out for things that are not your fault. The company is nice on the outside but toxic and unprofessional on the inside. The patients get cancelled everyday for no reason, when technologists call out every week you must call the entire schedule alone with no help from management and get cursed out over the phones because of last minute call outs. There is never coverage and often patient are upset from being rescheduled more than once. There is no communication with management until the last minute.

I was an intern for Alliance HealthCare Services for 6 months at their Resource Center in Irvine, CA. When I came into work, I felt welcomed. My coworkers are very friendly and transparent with me and to each other. Our team is very collaborative and helpful when a project needs to be finished. My management team, along with my peers, have an open door policy, and I took advantage of the opportunities. I have never worked with a team of people as great as the ones at Alliance. 

The team promotes a learning environment, and offers shadowing programs that allow team members to shadow other lines of business. I was able to learn about other lines of businesses that way, and it helped me excel in my projects and tasks. I also had mentors that took the time to teach me unique skills that I was able to apply to my projects and studies toward my BA. If you like working half autonomously and in a team, this is the internship for you. 

The most enjoyable part of the job is working with a great team of people. The hardest part of the job is working with Excel (for me). I would say the Microsoft Office Suite skills you would need is intermediate+. For Excel, you probably should have completed Computer Information Systems Intro course to be successful. Excel functions can be taught by your supervisor, but it's better to have good knowledge of it. The tasks that require you to use Excel will be taught to you, but for efficiency it's best you have a good understanding of Excel.

I only worked part time hours and 3 days a week, but I was able to learn new programs and perform my tasks to the best of my abilities. My management team was flexible with my school schedule. If you are looking into joining this team as an intern, I would suggest to brush up on your excel skills, have initiative, and be willing to learn and apply your skills.

I enjoyed my job when I was hired but it has gone down hill. We have very high expectations in this department. They’ve recently added calling patients, taking inbound phone calls, upped the productivity just last year, making numerous outbound calls for PCP referrals, and taking inbound emails with time limits on when they need to be responded to. It is very stressful. I have been in the workforce over 15 years doing authorizations and taking inbound calls has NEVER been one of them. I have a bachelor degree. My expertise is not customer service working in a call center environment. It is healthcare financials and billing! This team should not have such high expectations in addition to taking inbound calls and trying to adhere to a very high productivity count. My advice? You need a separate team to take the authorization calls. You need a separate team to request notes. Notes should be IN the chart before your authorization team touches the chart. You are losing money on having 1 person do everything. That is not efficient. You create burn out for your team. This job was fine before the calls coming in. Sometimes we get over 100 calls per day with only 1/3 of the team on the phones! That’s right! The whole team doesn’t have to take calls! In fact, when the calls came about, we were told it was “just a test” and that we would be getting a separate team for this. They lied to the test group. It was not a test. They planned this all along. It is not fair! Where is our pay increase for doing the job of 7 different people? I will not be staying at Akumin. Instead I will choose a company with patient satisfaction in mind. Patient satisfaction is more important than meeting metrics and squeezing the life out of your staff. Shame on you, Akumin.

● Work-life balance
You get work balance life only if you are liked by the managers and directors

● Pay & benefits
You are under paid for.the amount of work demanded and refused Overtime

● Job security and advancement
There's no job security, unless you're a Yes-man. The moment I refused to add diagnosis and other symptoms that where not in the patients medical records in order to get instant authorizations I knew my days were numbered. That is against the law. They set you up for failure by packing you with loads of tests to verify and the girls at the front desk are constantly calling you to get verifications for walkin patients instead of scheduling them for the next day. Overworking and stressing out the employee furthermore, on Friday to reprimand you for having 1 or 2 hours overtime. Akumin is a joke and committing fraud with the insurance companies.

● Management
I've never met the CEO. The new director never introduced herself I thought she was the Health Inspector until I saw her sitting in the old directors office. Never said hello goodbye or anything in between until the day she would fire ppl

● Culture
There is no culture. You have to do what they say or get fired.  You are set up for failure if you do not follow their way of thinking

● Overall
They set you up for failure. You basically are their puppet. There is no community. No consensus. Everyone is taking care of their own. No training. You have to figure stuff on your own. It's the worst work environment ever. This is a place for robots. Not humans. They are all about the money. They lie to ins companies about pts diagnosis to get instant authorizations that is fraud. Dont go thru the stress and anguish. Stay clear from them. The director in WPB is an evil woman who wants to lead by fear.

I'll start by saying that if you are a talented individual you will not want to work here, as it is a place with lots of favoritism and those efforts almost always go unnoticed. 

The usual day as a scheduler means you can answer anywhere from 100-150 calls a day, 50% of these calls are people that are lost seeking directions. When you try to get help from other local offices, they will not respond or send a link to google maps for you to figure out. 25% of these calls are doctors offices that are mad, or complaining that they did not receive reports on a patient, you are also required to send these. The other 15% of calls are complaints from angry, yelling patients, you must also deal with these because managers are too scared to  take calls. Lastly, 10% of these calls are for people that need to schedule. 8/10 times, there is some kind of issue. As a scheduler you might as well be data entry, since data entry will enter literally anything, even when it is incorrect. When Akumin takes over, they promise bonuses, with quotas that are impossible to meet. They continue to hire employees giving them the impression that they will be receiving bonuses. The quotas continually change making it impossible for schedulers to ever reach, therefore leaving everyone angry.


My building was full of black mold, and had no working heater. Make sure to bring a chair, or cushion, you WILL leave this place with back issues. 
We were told not to leave the scheduling building without asking, and be careful if you have to use the rest room and make your phone busy...they WILL send a mass email passive aggressively asking people not to be busy for so long.

Run while you can.....

I was a dedicated employee of this company for 6yrs. Use to love going to work, felt like a close family. They were very understanding of family issues and would work with you. Then upper management changed and everything was about numbers. We use to care for each and every patient that called in or we would contact, but now it's how fast we can take the call and move on to the next one. These are a lot of cancer patients and sometimes they need more time because they are very upset about what's happening to them. Use to feel like we could take that extra time, no we can, which is very sad that this company has lost this personal touch. Use to feel like my supervisor actually cared about me and understood me. But it wasn't so. In 6yrs the company hit some lows and couldn't give raises. Only received 2 raises of less then .25 in that 6 yrs. I still stay dedicated to them during this time. Use to have a 7 minute window for arrival time for your shift. Then they changed that and count every minute your late against you and also wouldn't let you punch in early at all seeing there was no over time aloud. But you could be early and not get credit for it. Last straw and reason I was let go was I tried to get approval to use my earned vacation time for my only brothers first child to be born. And was told no because I could give them the exact date and time of the labor.

CONSTANTLY BUSY, ORDERS FROM PHYSICIAN OFFICES COME IN ALL THE TIME SOME FOR THE SAME DAY AND THE PAIN CASES NEED TO BE SCHEDULED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.ONCE THEY ARE SCHEDULED, THE VERIFIERS VERIFY THE INSURANCE THEN I CALL AND LET THEM KNOW THE AMOUNT DUE AT THE TIME OF SERVICES. IT GETS HECTIC AT TIMES,BUT I HAD GREAT CO-WORKERS AND WE ALL WORKED AS A TEAM AND SUPPORTED EACH OTHER 100%. WE LAUGHED ALOT , IT WAS ALWAYS A GREAT PLACE TO COME TO WORK. BESIDES SCHEDULING CASES,I ALSO SCHEDULED THE STAFF FOR THE MONTHLY CALENDAR INCLUDING RN'S,PHYSICIANS, CRNA'S, MA'S, FRONT DESK THIS COULD CHANGE EACH DAY TOO,IT WAS A CONSTANT EFFORT TO KEEP STAFF FLOWING FOR 6 CENTERS. I WOULD  SAY THIS WAS THE HARDEST PART OF THE JOB. SOME TIMES EXPLAINING  BENEFITS TO PATIENTS WAS UNCOMFORTABLE BUT MOST OF THEM WERE NICE THEY JUST NEEDED SOMEONE TO TAKE THE TIME TO EXPLAIN WHY THEY OWED THE MONEY.I WORKED IN THE OFFICE WITH THE PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT AND THEY TOO WERE A JOY TO WORK FOR . MY SUPERVISOR WAS ELIZABETH SILLER AND SHE IS A JEWEL. I LOVED MY JOB, THE CONNECTION I HAD WITH THE PHYSICIAN OFFICE STAFF AND EVEN THOUGH YOU DO NOT MEET THE PATIENTS, YOU GET TO KNOW THEM OVER THE PHONE AS WELL. I LEARNED ALOT WORKING FOR THIS COMPANY, I ALSO WORKED IN ALOT OF AREAS FROM RECEPTIONIST TO BENEFITS TO SCHEDULING. I ONLY LEFT BECAUSE OF THE DRIVE IT WAS 105 MILES ONE WAY TO DRIVE FROM MT. VERNON TO DALLAS.

None of the management are MRI techs- most had no experience in radiology management. They didn't respect your personal life- the only thing that counted was staffing the sites. We are forced to work hours and sites that we don't want. They can make last minute changes to the schedule and if you say you can't do it, they'll write you up for insubordination saying you refused the shift. Management does not support you- you're the decision-maker at your site. It's so bad that nobody wants to stay on board. There's not enough staff to keep the sites open, so the supervisors (manager support) is forced to man the sites- they are on salary, so after they're done with their site shift, they still have their management work to get done. Your job security is good, because they cannot afford to fire anybody, so you're stuck working with coworkers that perform poorly. There's such a lack of MRI tech applicants that they have lowered their standards for hiring, just to fill the sites with warm bodies. If you're new to MRI, they will give you a job, because they will low-ball your pay. After you get your experience, go work for a REAL hospital/clinic. Everybody has to start somewhere. That's probably the same motto the managers have- the good supervisors got worked to death, then left for greener pastures.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Ct technologist 3 salaries reported	$45.09 per hour
Mri technologist 4 salaries reported	$50.67 per hour
Health screener 8 salaries reported	$53.70 per hour
Nuclear medicine technologist 3 salaries reported	$52.50 per hour
Medical receptionist 4 salaries reported	$17.71 per hour

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