registered nurse

nurse practitioner

occupational therapist

sterile processing technician

medical assistant

Legacy Health

I work at Unity Behavioral Health, so this review represents this particular hospital and I cannot speak to other Legacy facilities. 

In general, the staff culture at Unity is pretty good-- people support each other, listen to each other, and have honest conversations. But when people start to get ground down by dangerously acute working conditions and poor staffing, they do start to turn sour. I have seen both amazing unit teams and angry, discouraged, and hostile teams.

In general the biggest problem at Unity is the management, which ranges from myopically ineffective to destructively toxic. On my unit our managers are unable to have a productive conversation without becoming defensive, seclude themselves in their offices so they have no real understanding of the nursing work flow, and throw up their hands at any concern raised by staff, stating they can't do anything. They have been caught lying about deadlines, they have watched staff on camera to see if everyone was "doing their job", and have created a culture of mistrust and devisiveness. 

The biggest staff concern is the extreme acuity on some units, coupled with inadequate staffing (violent, impulsive, and psychotic patients without the appropriate staffing to keep patients or staff safe). When approached with concerns, our management consistently replies with platitudes, shrugs, or expresses the wish to change things, if only they could. Meanwhile, they have more than once left the building at 5pm to go home, knowing full well that the unit is desperately understaffed and struggling.

In addition to the lack of support, our management (this appears to be a hospital-wide leadership issue) is reflexively punitive in their response to any employment issues-- regardless of circumstances-- to the point where they have broken down good nurses and people have quit. There is no element of creative problem solving, empathy, or the kind of compassionate approach that staff use daily with patients. Rather, their approach is a concrete adherence to "policies" that are written not to protect employees but to protect Legacy itself. 

For instance, I frequently heard our assist manager become defensive and angry with RNs who were requesting to wear masks early on in the Covid pandemic-- at the time, Unity's policy was No Masks (they are still having people re-use a single mask for an entire 12 hour shift). The RNs concerned had elderly family at home or were higher risk themselves; our managers could have brought these concerns up the chain and advocated for their employees, but they chose to become defensive and repeat the "rules" and the "current policies", rather than seeking a solution. 

In-patient mental health care is hard work. To be effective at treating patients, hospitals need to support and nurture the health of its staff. Instead, Unity treats its staff like cogs in its poorly-built machine-- and rather than fixing the machine, the management there chooses to grind the cogs to bits.

Due to these problems, RNs did unionize at Unity, but management has fought this change tooth and nail every step of the way. It's been two years since we voted overwhelmingly to unionize but we still don't have a contract with Legacy because Legacy simply refuses to compromise or work with the union in any way. This too is an indication that Legacy, and Unity in particular, does not value its RNs.


I work full time, mainly swing shift at an inpatient (hospital) pharmacy and I’m very happy with my career. Legacy promotes an atmosphere of belonging and support. They understand that a healthy work/life balance is crucial for employees to perform at their best. My co-workers are great. Everyone supports one another and are willing to lend a hand if someone is behind on their tasks or needs coverage for a break. Management is awesome, I’ve never had such supportive bosses. Our pharmacy manager always starts huddle by asking if anyone needs help, and ends it with reminding us we are appreciated. The health insurance benefits are the best I’ve ever had; $0 copay on preventative appointments, low deductible, and affordable premiums. Vision and dental are available also. I haven’t used the dental insurance yet, but the vision insurance is awesome. They offer a 403(b) retirement plan and a 401(a) employer match savings. My hourly compensation is competitive for my area. The average here is $19.54/hour and I make closer to $24 after a year of employment. They also offer evening, night, and weekend differentials. Job responsibilities for an inpatient tech include pulling labels and meds for single doses, doing Pyxis pulls and restocks (main hospital and OR), pulling & receiving narcotics in the safe, mixing sterile IV preparations (once trained), and responding to missing med messages from nurses. We also have med req, purchasing, outpatient, and infusion positions. The hardest part of my job is the scheduling. When we’re fully staffed, we typically get a 4 week schedule, but right now we’re getting 1-2 week schedules and sometimes it’s not posted until the last day of the current schedule (ex: our schedules end on a Saturday, and sometimes the schedule is not posted until Thursday or Friday, meaning you don’t know what you work on Monday until it’s posted). This makes it difficult to plan ahead for child care or transportation.

I thoroughly enjoyed working at Legacy Health. Prior to working at Legacy,  I worked in law enforcement, and after retiring from that long-time career, I got a job at Legacy in the security department.   I thought is was a very good job with a solid salary, and great medical benefits at the time.   I worked all the facilities, but mainly at Emanuel Hospital and Good Samaritan, but was trained at the other facilities at the time.   

What first drew me to eventually applying to work at Legacy Health was being able to observe how they medically treated a relative of mine that was critically ill at the time.  My relative was in the ICU and the main floor rooms---for many months at one of their facilities.  I knew then if I was going to go out of retirement from being in law enforcement---Legacy was my top choice.  I took a job at Legacy for about 3.5 years, went back into retirement for a couple of years, and then returned for another year, and then permanently retired.

Most of my co-workers were above average to work with. Only in my opinion---in any work place you will have some, who see more of the negative of what is going on---but all in all I saw most a pleasure to work with.

The hardest part of the job is that incidents can get unpredictable. When dealing with the public, staff, patients or people that have no business being on property it can be stressful at times in those situations.  

If you are a person who works well with the public, calm under pressure, fair to all, and quick problem solver you will enjoy the personal benefits and satisfaction of working at Legacy.

Legacy Health System as a whole is a great place to work for. They treat their employees well with benefits, a match 401K plan, and many other perks and benefits.
 
I was an Administrative Assistant and I loved my job, but most all the people I worked with in various other departments. Very much team oriented. Since my job had a variety of many duties, I could be called off my lunch break to take care of something. Needless to say I never got a full lunch break and even though it is policy to take a 30 minute break if it was interrupted, it was frowned upon by management because frankly you could spend a day trying to get a 30 minute uninterrupted break. This wasn't the problem of the system, this was a management problem and lack of cross training. 

I was chair of the Reel Team which is an employee recognition committee. This in itself was really neat to be able to recognize people who were exceptional at their job. We also devoted an entire week of special treats each day for all Legacy employees and all shifts to be recognized for their hard work and devotion. I've never worked for a company like this. It made people feel valued, which I believe every one needs. 

If I had to put anything negative down about Legacy, I think it would have to be lack of communication between my manager and I. It's hard to be an assistant to some one that you can't have open communication with. Otherwise I truly loved my job and the company I worked for.

The culture is every man for himself.  There are little to no resources available to accomplish the system-wide goals set by system-wide administrative leaders with clinical titles who rarely set foot in any of the hospitals.  

Email is the primary mode of communication whether you are an administrative employee, clinical manager or system leader.  Training is rolled out, then tossed aside and replaced if it doesn't produce results in a month or two.

C-level leaders that never touch a patient are delighted with their 6+ figure salaries and bonuses yet many of the line staff that serve patients are being laid off.  The Chief OPERATIONS Officer has one single year of clinical experience, and that as interim president of the largest hospital in the system.  As that hospital suffers severe layoffs and budget cuts, he's received a promotion and salary increase.

Staff are kind and generous but do not have time or resources to help each other.  It's anyone's guess whether Legacy still has the means to support their patients fully.  When I left, there had been six straight months of ratcheting down the number of minutes per day that nurses were allowed to spend helping patients.

There is a mass exodus at all levels, in addition to the staff being laid off.  The ethical standard of leadership is low.  Clerical staff to hospital presidents are evacuating.  Do not work here.

Legacy was an excellent organization to work for.  I was challenged, learned a lot, worked at all levels of the organization and was involved in many activities inside and outside of the organization.  

I had excellent support from my director, was able to have the right amount of support in the three clinics I was responsible for running.

A typical day was filled with interruptions, meetings, chaos and fun.  I worked with patients to identify areas of opportunities and was able to build teams of talented people to meet the goals and needs of the patients.  Legacy is a very patient centered organization that is always seeking ways to improve the way healthcare is delivered.

I managed three clinics over a 50 mile radius, I was able to build several new buildings, recruit, train and influence the infancy of a new "medical-home" building and clinic.  I recruited physicians, mid-level providers, nurses, medical assistants and all areas of clerical support.  For two of the years I was employed with Legacy I was responsible for the "staffing-department", where I built a team of support staff from 6 to 150 employees.  These employees were utilized throughout the 25 medical clinics in the Portland regions.

The hospitals should  try to tackle patient flow problems. Leadership can be stagnant, behind the times, reactive instead of proactive, and not nearly innovative enough. There is not much opportunity to advance within the company, and many leaders have been there for a long time (which can be good or bad). 

Evidence based practice: It seems no one looks at better patient care, or management practices. Or it takes years for them to come about. Common sense is starting to go out the window.

It tries to be competitive with Providence, but lags behind. Pay is reactive to the market. Pay practices are very much like a union hospital, which Legacy is not unionized for nurses. They will give a bonus for meeting each hospitals financial goals, although it is difficult for staff to figure out their role in this. 

Change is a constant and can be expected. 

As always, the fellow staff members are what helps you get through the busy days and stay sane. We give great care and appropriate care, even though satisfaction scores might not reflect this. Even though this review might seem critical, Legacy Health is a good place to work. I'm glad I work here.

I loved my job, my coworkers, and other ancillary staff.  Management is either in a meeting, or about to go to a meeting, they need to leave soon to go to a meeting so can you just send me an email about your issue?  If you didn't already catch my drift, management is almost non-existent.  When things inevitably go wrong they pop their heads out of their office and seem utterly surprised that such long simmering disasters could have been avoided if had they listened to concerned staff.  I stayed as long as I did because of some great coworkers who were breaking themselves trying to keep it all going.  Legacy loved to tout themselves about culture, but somewhere in upper management is a big disconnect about how to save money and how to competently lead. I saw blatant favoritism rewarded and unqualified advancement for people who'd been less than stellar in their job, but knew the right person to cozy up to.  When I started to see issues of harassment and safety be disregarded, I knew it was time to leave. Legacy has already gotten itself in trouble for these issues in the past, but apparently they like to learn their lesson the hard way.  Don't work there unless you really think you can ignore the bad to make up for the little good you can do.

Legacy Health has serious issues.  

They (upper level admin) are destroying the culture that took a long time to build.  

Now it’s about how to try and stay afloat financially and to sacrifice the work-life balance of workers where 85% of their costs come from.  They stress worker optimization now which means doing more with less.  This will not be a sustainable model and this organization where I have worked for over a decade is going downhill fast.  Not sure how much longer I will stay in this job.  It’s getting that bad….

I used to have 3 levels of management between me and the chief medical officer.  Now it’s at least 6.  Talk about throwing a ton of money at bureaucratic nonsense. 

They are adjusting everyone’s pay and presenting this plan that is really a huge cut as a wonderful proposal for us.  Essentially putting lipstick on a pig.  What is going on here.  There have been physician complaints about this for months and we keep hearing the same garbage of “we are working on it…we hear you”.  Obviously they aren’t listening and if they are they are showing us all how little they value us.  

We have never been closer than now in terms of unionizing to try to bring some balance this one sided equation.

Wouldn't recommend anyone work for Legacy. Life is probably nice in the George Brown Ivory tower, but for the ground level employees the benefits are terrible, especially when compared to other healthcare companies. No opportunities for advancement, unless of course you are friends with someone high up or your dad is a legacy surgeon or something. The nepotism and lack of integrity is downright disgusting. HR dept won't enforce policies. A running joke in the workplace is that if there wasn't mismanagement at Legacy there would be none at all. Run like a true communist organization with the people at the top reaping all the benefits and people at the bottom left holding the bucket. Avoid if at all possible. On the plus side if you don't do your job or are a total screw up they will never get rid of you and blame your lack of competence on your coworkers, so good job security there. Our department actually had to file a lawsuit to get Legacy to pay for our lunch breaks that they forced us to work through for years, we won a settlement. Finally, nothing is seniority based and the longer you are there the more eager they are to "lighten the payroll".

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 12 salaries reported	$61.23 per hour
Nurse practitioner 25 salaries reported	$88.85 per hour
Occupational therapist 3 salaries reported	$58.96 per hour
Sterile processing technician 7 salaries reported	$22.71 per hour
Medical assistant 3 salaries reported	$25.54 per hour

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