community health worker

physician

medical assistant

nurse practitioner

physician assistant

Bay Area Community Health

What was a typical day at work in the life of a Foothill Counselor… seeing my 7 or more students, checked in on my students later in the day to make sure they’re doing ok, called parents, supported teachers with the students or other parents on school who were interested in counseling services, made sure my billing was done on time, responded to emails, tried to stay on top of charting, attended meetings at the school or at the administrative offices, responded to a growing inbox of emails, driving and scarfing down food at the same time, and finding time in this schedule to take a half decent lunch... that was a typical day in the life of a Foothill Counselor. A lot of what I did, was not billable/productive time, but I managed, because I cared about representing myself in a respectful, and professional manner to the low socioeconomic communities that I serviced, and the relationships that I built over the years with these families who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to counseling services otherwise.

What I learned… Foothill is only a stepping stone of my potential. I am grateful for the opportunities it has lent me, being that I was able to work with these communities, the members of East Side San Jose for the amount of years I was afforded. In reflection, I learned that I strongly disagreed personally and professionally, with this agency and their management team. At the time, we clearly and openly communicated our concerns with the department managers, and the CEO himself, and there continued to be a gap of servicing this population with unrealistic conditions that ultimately impacted the patients themselves— a rapid turnover of good, seasoned, ethical, and legal Clinicians. Recently, I learned the few who are left, voted in a Union (clearly, not much has changed since I left).

Management would greatly benefit on improving their communication, accepting their actions and consequences alike, admitting fault, and making an honest return on the valid concerns brought up by the front line workers— your Behavioral Health counselors. There are protocols and procedures in place, but it gets confusing when you try to figure out if the first email received at 8:05 in the morning trumps a later email sent at 1:33 or an even later email sent at 5:56 pm. It might even help the situation, if competent managers were hired for the positions, rather than internally creating positions for individuals with no management background, or promoting individuals who weren’t earning their keep.

The hardest part about this job, was choosing not to return. Over the years, the work at the schools, and my amazing, supportive coworkers, who few remain at the Behavioral Health department, have added to my Foothill story. Without these takeaways, my review would’ve reflected much more poorly; the only positive lining are the hard working, and caring counselors the Behavioral Health department has.

I am writing about my experience working for the Dental Department of Foothill Community Health Center.

Management:
1. They’re incompetent of doing basic leadership tasks. For example: when a conflict arises between coworkers instead of addressing the problems (sometimes even discipline) they’d rather tell the complainant to forget it even happened. Or they’ll shrug it off and say “You know how they are”.

2. The company advocates for a balanced home and work life but management can’t even make a fair schedule for their employees. It’ll always be the same assistants that have weekends off. Leaving the others to constantly work every single Saturday. Forget about balance!

3. The dental schedule is constantly over booked. Thus making us overworked. Sometimes the scheduling going as far as 5 patients per hour, per doctor! When management sees us struggling to keep up with sterilization, breaking down or setting up rooms, they’d rather sit and look busy on their laptops instead of helping us out. Yet we’re all supposed to be a “team”? The same especially goes to when we are short staffed and we NEED help, the supervisor is no where to be found.

Just when you thought this review was over... it’s not. Not only is the management horrible but the other assistants are unprofessional as well.

1. Cliques, Cliques, Cliques!  If they feel like you don’t belong there, they WILL boss you around and they WILL talk about you in their native language. Management has tried to enforce a “common language rule” around the offices but no one takes management seriously so no one listens. They recently brought up a written warning system regarding the common language issue yet employees are still speaking in their native tongue with no warnings written. Just empty threats and no action. Whatsoever.

2. Your coworkers will hide and not grab patients when they need to be called. They would rather try and stock the rooms and do unnecessary chores around the office when there are patients to be called. Then they will act like they didn’t refresh the schedule. Again, management sees this happening and does not do a single thing. Until you as an employee complain to them saying your “teammates” are not picking up their slack, they will just tell them passively to get to work with no sense of urgency.


I honestly can go on and on about how I feel about the Dental Department but I feel that my point was made. Overall do NOT reccomend this place to work. Look for better! The ONLY PRO about this company is the extremely fast PTO accrual... however it is not worth the stress and tears this job will cause you.

To be very honest, almost very close to the WORST workplace I have worked and I have been in the healthcare business for 7 years. At first glance, the place and its ideal to serve the low income community sound like a very rewarding mission, just to find out that the mission statement is only whats good about this organization. There are always clashes between different departments trying to push blame on each others, and sometime even employees in the same department could really back-stab you at anytime. The poor management style and lack of communication has cause this organization to become a very TOXIC work environment across the board. 

Since December 2018, they have lost a lot of money that not only the hourly employee, but some managers voluntarily quit supporting their cause.They changed the Dental and Vision benefit to a terrible carrier that literally nobody in San Jose would take, not to mention the 401k percentage has been cut in half. This organization is only good if you want to make a step into the healthcare industry with no experience...then this might provide you with an opportunity to learn...although this is also a problem as they have too many non-experience employee that don't know what they are suppose to be doing and lead to most of the patient concerns. This is the first healthcare organization I seen that run their business under the RETAIL system...and when I speak about retailers like Walmart or Goodwill...then you know what I meant.

I feel very bad for the patients whom currently being serve here as they will never get to experience whats call "exceptional customer service" unless they go elsewhere. People that work here are disappointing with their managers/ executive team and have no space to address their concern (or even if they do, nothing will get fix anyway...and by the way, they force you to utilize your break or lunch time if you want to speak to the Employee Advocate or HR about the WORK's concern...that explained how greedy this employer is). Those disgruntle will go toward the patients that continue to go there just because they don't know what is going on each time they visit, and yes...its very common to see front desk staff yell at the patient..somehow I don't know why this is even tolerable in an ethical workplace ...not to mention that same front desk employee got rewarded as an employee of the month...what a joke!! 
 
BE AWARE THAT MOST OF THEIR PATIENT ARE ELDERLY, OR CANNOT SPEAK ENGLISH AT ALL

The work with clients and families is a wonderful experience. Great opportunity to work in a school based therapy setting and gain knowledge and skills. Management is all over the place and feels very unstable. There have been multiple restructures with the upper management staff while I have been here and these only seem to cause confusion and frustrations for clinicians. Meetings seem pointless and cause confusion with rules that appear to change weekly. There is very little appreciation shown from management toward clinicians and resentments within the company seem very high. Upper management appears to lack a basic understanding of what the clinicians do and requirements placed on clinicians seem unreasonable and focused more on making money for the company rather than sustainable considerations for the employees. The staff is openly unhappy with work demands and management does not appear to take complaints from clinicians seriously. Luckily most of my time is spent at my various schools during the school year so time spent in the main office is limited making it somewhat bearable to work here. The work with kids is great if you can effectively manage the negative work environment. Remaining hopeful that positive changes are to come.

I really loved my job when I started, and felt like I had a lot of flexibility and more freedom than other jobs.  As time went on things went downhill.  Most of our department has either been let go, fired, or laid off.  Management does not treat us with respect and we are expected to work more than 8 hours a day.  Despite being professionals with experience we are micromanaged and management does not trust that we will competently get our job done on our own.  I have never worked somewhere that had such little trust in their employees.  Employee feedback is not valued and is rarely taken into account to make changes in the work environment or client care.  Additionally management is held to different standards regarding ethical documentation; and while clinicians must have their documentation done within strict timelines, management has gone months without completing documentation with no repercussion.  This company does not offer flexibility and they love to write employees up for little things.  Positive things that have kept many employees here are competitive pay, the opportunity to work with wonderful clients and co-workers, and loan forgiveness programs.  My hope is that the department and company can improve the company culture.

This company has taught me a lot when it comes to learning new things in the medical field. I would recommend working for this company for new students and get some good experience and then growing more elsewhere such as Kaiser or Valley Medical Center. The environment is great. The pay and raises is not fair enough due to what back office does on the daily. Pay has been more on favoritism to some staff. Management is not as great so don't even expect them or HR do anything about your concerns. By reviewing all of the ratings it seems like its mostly managers or staff that works in HR rate this company GREAT. Keep in mind that they have a set schedule from monday-friday 8-5 and no weekends and unlike the real staff that works hard works monday -sunday 8am-10pm. of course its 40 hours a week but we feel like we work more and dont get paid enough. There are no bonuses. No paid sick leave they take your PTO instead. There is NO free breakfast on fridays!! (only HR and who knows where else)  they only provide lunch for provider meeting and not the staff!! Just wish they would appreciate the front and back office staff A LOT more!!!

A typical day at my own clinic (speciality) is honestly fun. I love my staff and my providers are awesome! I came into the medical field scared out of my mind especially because my externship staff/providers wasn't ...welcoming. I thought being in the medical field I was not going to be able to be myself because the staff would be too strict or the providers would be belittle me. (Well thats has always been my impression when I went to Heald and talking to all my professors) Everyday I'm learning new things especially because most of the providers who I work with are very helpful. And I'm always at a different clinic. Management is okay... truthfully after working at different organizations I accepted that there's no "perfect" management. I just try my best to be at my best independently. The hardest part of this job is cross training only because they do not really give you enough time and proper training to be in a different department but expect you to take over the clinic. The most enjoyable part of my job is my staff at speciality. Never thought I would be so attached to a wonderful team... when I'm not at my clinic I'm always missed and are missing them.

Foothill provides great benefits and an excellent salary, let's get that out of the way first. Their problem is management. I can't speak for all departments but for our department the productivity expectations are ridiculous leaving us ZERO time to do notes, assessments and treatment plans during the work day. I go home exhausted and angry and still have to put in another hour to 2 hours to finish all the paperwork expected of my position. Management is antagonistic towards us and appear to actively design ways to make our work more miserable. Management does not trust employees at all.  We accrue 17 PTO days per year but have to use them for all appointments, sick days and the shut down of our department for 2 weeks at Christmas time. Goodbye PTO and goodbye vacation. I have seen doctors and nurses in extreme distress in the clinic because of the overwhelming amount of paperwork and Foothill's constant demand to see more patients and yet more patients. Their Client expectations (encounters) are completely unreasonable and compare very badly to other agencies in the bay area.

BACH is a great stepping stone to more organized  and higher paying companies. We get to help those who are uninsured or underinsured. A lot of Spanish, Indian, and Chinese speaking patients.  Most of the coworkers are nice and easy to work with, feels more like part of a family. Of course as with any job, there are people who don't do their job properly so often have to pick up the slack. Often times, the huddle meetings are a waste of time since they are more for the medical assistants and clinic stays open during then. For some staff, our schedules change without discussing it first. Sometimes manager is not professional, asking about certain things in front of patients. Definitely don't get payed as much as we deserve- Medical Assistants wage is almost same as front desk. If your customer service sucks and you can't handle getting yelled at sometimes by patients then don't apply for this job. I'm going to miss some of the staff and patients here.

I have been working at Foothill for a little over 3 years now, and all i can say is that foothill has become my second home. I have been fortunate to work in different fields that have expanded my overall work experience.I have been given a promotion after my second year here. There is always room for advancement here at foothill.
Yes the clinic is fast paced, which can be overwhelming at times, but the management team is always there to help in any way possible We all help each other out at stressful times. The manager here at the Monterrey plaza location always goes above and beyond to make working here a stress free zone, along with bringing us all together and encouraging us to do the best we can.
The Clinic is open 7 days a week, which makes hours  flexible. 
Overall, I enjoy working here. My coworkers are all amazing team members, and the providers and management team are all very respectful.  
I highly recommend this employer.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Community health worker 50 salaries reported	$26.21 per hour
Physician 45 salaries reported	$251,960 per year
Medical assistant 4 salaries reported	$24.33 per hour
Nurse practitioner 11 salaries reported	$166,947 per year
Physician assistant 12 salaries reported	$167,216 per year

Working at Bay Area Community Health: Company Overview and Reviews

Bay Area Community Health

Bay Area Community Health Ratings

Popular jobs at Bay Area Community Health

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected