registered nurse

travel nurse

health screener

ct technologist

Northwest Medical Center

Northwest medical center was a decent place to work until @ 2010. The CHS Community Health Systems parent company began to micromanage from their corporate HQ in Tennessee, making core staff and managers feel like monkeys under observation in a large cage. Benefits dwindled, patient care ratios went from 5:1 to 6:1 for nurses and from 10:1 to 12:1 for nurse assistants. The electronic documentation system was changed with near zero input from staff, leading to much hostility. Employee turnover has become a significant problem. Many of the veteran core staff jumped ship, only to be replaced by new grads and temp/agency staff. Communication among members of so called "patient care" teams, doctors, nurses, pt/to, rt, etc...disappeared, as did accountability. The hospital is obsessed with meeting statistic HCAHPS scores to the detriment of actual patient care. Management doesn't care if patients receive high quality treatment while hospitalized. They only want their scores reported as high as possible in order to receive maximum compensation. Patients can die as long as the post-hospitalization survey reports high numbers. 
I worked at Northwest for almost five years, and cannot recommend any hospital or other facility operated by CHS. The rumors are true: it's an old boys network that functions on cronyism, with little concern for the sense of community within their facilities or within the cities where they exist. Management activity reminds staff that employment is 'at will' and that they reserve to terminate at any time without reason. Imagine the tense atmosphere created when, at the beginning of shift, you realize another personas been fired without reason, and you have to work alongside one more strange agency face who has not yet been oriented......

In the time I've been an employee at Northwest Medical Center I have seen a steady decline in the management in my department. Turnover rates are quite high because compensation is so low. The medical staff earn a fair wage but the rest of us work like slaves for very little money. Most departments are understaffed and overworked and management does not step in to help pick up the slack.  There is very little work-life balance unless you make it to management. Per diem employees are not eligible for benefits even though some of us work 40+ hours per week and we only have 40 hors of sick time PER YEAR because it's required by the state of Arizona. But if you don't have enough of that time saved up and you have to call out for an emergency, know that you'll be coming back to an automatic write up which prevents you from transferring to another department for 1 full year. Staff have been known to cut corners because management cares about numbers, not patients. Maybe if there was a complete change in management, fair advancement opportunities and more competitive pay for those of us who strive to make our patients feel like they matter, maybe I'd consider staying. But just like the 20+ employees who quit in my department before me, I'll be looking for employment elsewhere.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The best (and only really good thing) about working at Northwest was it was close to home. If you live on the NW side of town there aren’t a lot of options.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Poor leadership from the top down. Being for-profit they are always trying to cut costs. While I understand this is true for most hospitals nowadays, they would cut costs to the extent that it affected patient safety. For example, getting rid of the unit educator. Our manager stepped down and they decided to save the FTE and not replace her. Instead combined units together to be managed under one “director” who had no experience in our field. Then had the CNLs doing the department education without giving them proper time or resources to stay up to date with current practices. It wall all about cutting costs to benefit the corporate big wigs not the community. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The culture is to put the person in charge that will cost the least. Meaning, probably has the least experience so they could pay them less than the more experienced leader. Education and training are not the priority. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Take too many patients than what is safe, and the second you get down to safe ratios you were forced to send a nurse home to cut costs. Even if you had to call them back as soon as you got one more admission .

A typical day is actually not typical at all when you work in an critical care environment where things can change in the blink of an eye. I love my job as a nurse in my unit and can not say enough good things about my co-workers, they are supportive, they embody a team atmosphere and push you to learn and grow all the time. I would not be the nurse I am today without them. There are many layers to the hospitals management the unit assistant manager I think very highly of and feel she has the best interest of the staff, patients and company in mind when making decisions. The chief nursing officer and CEO however I feel only care about the financial aspect of the hospital and the bottom line and will stop at nothing to make good numbers. The nurse to patient ratios have increase, the tech to patient ratios have increased, so much so that floor nurses are only pill pushers and there are not enough techs to help answer call lights. Over the past two years we have lost over 200 nurses alone due to poor morale and management from our CNO. Our benefits packages have been the worst they have ever been, with the employee having more out of pocket expenses and co-insurance costs, even if the have services at their hospital. I once loved working in this hospital and could not say enough good things about it, however they has changed drastically and I'm sorry to say that I could not recommend working here anymore.

I was excited when I first started.  At the time, the director was an RN who  would work with us on the floor and created a good work environment and had clout to advocate for us and good patient care. But each subsequent director became less involved with the clinic and more aligned with admin's push for productivity and making money.  The last director hired was not a nurse- instead Admin wanted a marketer!  The focus on patient care and safety shifted and the pressure to be faster was causing me to make mistakes as a nurse.  They did not want to invest in training current employees or hire extra staff.  Turnover was high.  It is such a large organization that the top has no idea about the day to day operations on the floor and they do not trust their directors to make decisions- they have to have 10 people sign off anytime that you need to hire a new employee, so it would be months before someone was hired.  In the meantime we were scrambling and working OT.  If you get into a dept with a good director you will be ok, but be wary.  It's interesting RNs leaving with 8+ years with the company were not interviewed to find out WHY they were leaving.... 

Typical work day in my position consists of: 
* Verifying insurance eligibility with anywhere from 30-60 patients      * Answering phone calls
* Assisting with patient documents
* Acting as a liaison between patients/health providers/pharmacy
* Registering patients for medical services
* Handling billing and medical record requests

This position requires the ability to juggle these tasks and more, all the while you deal with the stress of falling behind and the disgruntled patient in front of you. When it's busy, you are not guaranteed to have time for a lunch; if you do have time, you are most likely solo and unable to leave your desk for an extended period of time.
In this position, you are asked to collect on "bad-debts", co-pays, and coinsurances, but not able to provide refunds - for that, you need to contact management, who are non-existent.

Communication between the branches is unbearable at best. You are likely to hear something from someone at your position in the form of a sticky note left at your desk.

The most enjoyable part of this position is the staff on shift with you. Mind you this does not speak positively of the job - the clinical staff makes this job bearable.

My work at NHS contains a wide variety of duties. I started out as a core measure abstractor with no experience in core measures. I quickly learned the specifications of core measures and would like to say I was able to educate the staff and improve our scores over the year of having this position. After a year they promoted me to Quality Coordinator in which I do chart reviews for various indicators including mortalities, concurrent and operative/invasive reviews/logging, patient satisfaction w/HCAHPS, and other indicators using the guidelines in our facilities by-laws. I also managed the Department Specific Performance Improvement graphs as well as conducting tracers in the departments for mock Joint Commission surveys. I enjoy working with the people at Northwest Medical Center. I have learned a lot during my employment there and hope to continue to learn more.

The work we do is meaningful but the job is absolutely terrible for mental health. It’s part of the job but you get attacked and get racial slurs thrown at you. That’s to be expected. But there is not much support from management and at times they actively try to look for reasons to get rid of you if they don’t like you for whatever reason. Daily work life is mundane and the 12 hour shift drags on. But there are often incidents of violence towards patients and staff. I learned a lot about mental health so this position is good if you would like to expand your knowledge in the Psychology field. Coworkers were generally great which is needed to get through the days. They are also the best part of the day. You meet very kind, helpful people that you work with. But the worst part was the management. 

If you look at the break down of my scores, you will see that I am not just an angry employee.  I like what I do for a living, but this environment is toxic.  Have never in my entire career felt so ignored and humiliated for trying to share what I learned from successful jobs. Lots of arrogant, narcissistic, toxic people in management and c-suite that work there.  There are good people who are not happy, but this is their job and jobs are not always easy to come by so they just hang in there hoping it will get better.  It won't, the whole C-suite and top managers left a couple of years ago.  Environment is even worse if you can believe it.  Turnover still extremly high.  They do surveys hoping to improve, but they don't get it.  They talk as though they care, but everyone knows they don't.  They count their money every day, I think that gives stress to everyone.

This is the worst hospital I've ever worked in as a medical professional. I felt that the nursing staff was supportive, however the management and higher level corporate officers (CEO, CNO, CQO etc) are absolutely profits minded. This hospital regularly and consistently walks on their employees to make more money by cutting hours of essential workers, making choices about benefits such as health insurance that cast their employees mush more money to have sub par coverage and many more poor practices. I honestly cannot believe most the things they do to their employees are legal but they operate in a "right to work" state and they take full advantage of that. I believe their clinical staff is wonderful and talented but the hospital itself deserves no credit for that and does not treat them with any respect! It  was a terrible hospital to work for, I stayed 3 years to get experience and then promptly moved on.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 1 salary reported	$34.28 per hour
Travel nurse 4 salaries reported	$1,864 per week
Health screener 1 salary reported	$28.50 per hour
Ct technologist 1 salary reported	$2,500 per week

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