patient advocate

registered nurse manager

case manager

liaison

transit manager

Somatus

The company’s mission sounds meaningful on paper, however, the day-to-day reality made it difficult to authentically show up as a “patient advocate.” The role lacked flexibility, the workload was unrealistic, and expectations changed constantly without improving the quality of care.

Somatus has a pattern of unexpected layoffs, followed shortly after by rapid hiring, only to repeat the layoff cycle again. This creates an unstable environment where teams never feel caught up, supported, or secure. There are changes almost every day, often not for the better, and it becomes exhausting to keep up with shifting priorities.

The Patient Health Advocate role is treated as a catch-all for responsibilities that should be shared by a full interdisciplinary team. I carried an unreasonable number of patients and was expected to complete more in an eight-hour day than is feasible. My home office essentially became a call center, and my personal vehicle became a work car as I drove between multiple hospitals and patient homes weekly.

Despite the title, the outreach often felt intrusive and borderline harassing: frequent calls, digging for family members’ contact information, and pressure to engage patients even when they declined. This didn’t align with trauma-informed care or ethical advocacy.

Home visits were required without proper clinical or safety training, and many tasks overlapped with what established hospital teams, case managers, and social workers were already providing. It became difficult to understand the actual value of the role, as the focus seemed heavily driven by insurance partnerships and meeting metrics rather than meaningful patient support.

This job may suit someone comfortable with heavy outreach, strict metrics, constant travel, and ever-changing expectations, but it is not a good fit for anyone seeking stable, authentic, patient-centered advocacy in a supportive environment.

They used to value and compensate their employees sharing in the exponential growth that their team members helped to make this company so much money. I would not recommend working here. The company has grown a LOT in the past year, the workload has increased and without the Central Nurse team NONE of this could have happened yet they gave a small raise that doesn't even reward the nurses for all the work done to contribute to the company's success nor does it take into account the cost of living/inflation. This company used to value and care/compensate their nurses well and that no longer happens. Very high turnover decreases overall morale, including leadership turnover. Upper management is completely out of touch or doesn't care about the issues on the Central Nurse Team. Months of the same issues being brought up with no changes being made to retain nurses. Overwhelming and unrealistic work expectations leave the entire central Nurse team feeling unappreciated and the same work the field nurses do is audited at a ridiculous level, while the field nurses can submit incorrect or inaccurate work and it's considered acceptable. They tell the Central nurses it's so that they can pass the health plans audits, or NCQA or whatever it's called but if that was the case then ALL the nurses doing the SAME assessments would be held to the same standard and they are not. Not even close! So many good nurses have left and the ones who remain just haven't found something better yet. 

Although there are definite negatives, the positives outweigh the negatives. There is a big push on "engagement"  You place cold calls introducing the benefits of the company, trying to get new patients. If you excel in a position, they expect you to train other teammates, but do not compensate you for that training. Company will pass you by for promotions or different positions you are more than qualified for, because "Somatus will benefit most with you in the position you are in", but they will not increase your pay for being a top producer. Wages for new employees have been known to be higher than wages of long term, high producing teammates. There is alot of flexibility and not having to commute is a huge plus. Company provides office supplies and iPad and iPhone. Mileage is paid if you visit patients homes or facilities. Lots of changes all the time, the company is always trying to develop "best practice" but people who are not familiar with the work make unrealistic expectations and workflows. My body has taken a hit from sitting all day every day for more than 2 years. Meetings! Meetings! Meetings! I've gotten gift cards, company swag, bonuses, and appreciation gifts such as snack boxes and compensated meals. Vacation time is very good, you can receive 2 weeks in the first year,  plus many holidays. 8 to 5 Monday thru Friday, no holidays no weekends. 401 k matching has been promised by the end of the year, so I would expect it by June or July next year if it works out the same as the bonuses. Take the good with the bad. 

Somatus is a wonderful place to work!! There is an excellent and very thorough introductory period.  Even when you are out of orientation you don’t have to hesitate to ask questions from any of the staff on your care team, any staff that helped precept you and you feel complete comfortable talking with your supervisor for assistance as needed.  I have been with the company as a RN Care Manager since the end of October 2021 in Kentucky and I don’t ever see myself going anywhere else!  The whole company from HR to the training and orientation staff to your team staff are wonderful and make learning everything so easy so you can start your job out with the knowledge base you need to be successful in this company.  We are getting to provide great can and education to individuals with stage 3 kidney disease and up.  We are able to help the make lifestyle modifications to keep many patients from ever having to go on dialysis and that is a wonderful thing.  You get to work some from home and then some on the field for
Home visits which helps give opportunities to provide care however is easiest for the 
patients.  If you are looking for a company that truly cares about its staff and about providing the best patient care possible this is the job for you!!

The company is growing rapidly, but they don’t seem to be able to keep up with the demands that this creates. Focus and attention goes to new markets, leaving the more well established markets in the lurch. HR is not responsive after you are trained, and seems outright hostile at times. Management is lacking and doesn’t seem to fight for their employees, as more and more ridiculous demands are made from the top corporate cronies with seemingly no benefit to the patient or the team. The overall concept of the company is great, but it has lost sight of this goal, and the insane amount of processes and documentation have now overshadowed the actual work of helping the patient. Whereas the field teams previously had regular check-ins with upper management, those have been reduced to zero, and mid level managers now relay all information to the patient facing team members, and 99% of the time, even the mid level managers have no idea why the changes/additions are being made. This leads to a very frustrating day to day experience, as we try to juggle actually helping the patient and keeping up with the changes and documentation they continuously add on.  For a company that used to pride itself on its culture, they are making it difficult to stay on board by the minute. I’ve started looking for other opportunities. 

Easy, mostly remote work. You might like it if you like telemarketing or call-center work. Easy to flex hours within the work week. Somatus has a lot of lofty goals for helping patients, but at the end of the day it's honestly just another money grubbing part of the kidney care industry. Upper management is so focused on hyping up their program: to staff, patients, insurance companies, etc: that they have no sense of reality. If they really cared about patients, they wouldn't be in bed with the insurance companies that care more about money than patients. Management is incompetent and my direct supervisors spent most of their time pestering me about going on door-to-door sales calls. 
I honestly don't think I did much or had the ability to do much to help patients in my role. I was expected to help patients get all kinds of things that their insurance didn't cover, and it would take me hours of phone calls just to find out there were no resources for what the patient needed. Somatus and the insurance companies then turn around and report this kind of thing as a great success how much time was spent helping a patient. That money would be much better spent just buying patients the blood pressure monitor, or whatever other bit of basic medical care they needed. Also the worst HR experience I've ever had, the HR manager was off putting from the first interaction. Also they refused to pay out all my banked PTO when I left, I don't think that's even legal in my state.

What is the best part of working at the company?
My direct manager was excellent and helpful anytime you needed it. The rapport that developed between my patients and myself was priceless. The pay and benefits were decent. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The company changed the process and workflows so frequently that the staff could not adjust to one change nor see whether it was effective because the company was changing it again. The worst stressor was not having job security from day to day despite being assured by upper management that the field staff would be notified as soon as they knew of any staffing decreases. We found out how the difficult way that this was not true as we were notified on a Tuesday afternoon that Friday would be our last day. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Unfortunately upper management did not back up our Op Manager nor some of the employees. So unfortunately the bad apples got away with not pulling their weight, not working the hours required and adding mileage for visits that weren’t made.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Very busy with no time for breaks or lunch. The patients were absolutely wonderful and the company seemed great at the beginning however they slowly showed what was most important.

Remote work mostly with a big focus on home visits but to many patients, to great a travel radius, and not enough staff to successfully complete that requirement. Stay busy within the day with assessments, tasks, meetings, reports to review and follow ups on patients, patient incoming calls, and follow ups with providers. An individuals patient census is way above what you can successfully manage so it's hard to meet patient needs as you're just trying to get things done to stay afloat. Constant changes to procedures. Many of the staff do things different so you never really know the correct way to do things. Orientation process is fast to get you on your own so often team members start confused. Team members are willing to try to answer your questions to the best of their ability and managers from my experience. The teams seem to get along well. If you're ever able to get your work caught up you often have to help other team members with their work because they have so many things to do and it's easy to get behind. Require constant calls to patients over and over and many avoid the calls. Overall a great concept to what they are trying to do to help CKD patients but a long way to go before success is achieved. Very overwhelming work days. 

This company overworks you to the point that your own health is at jeopardy. As a RN you will be overwhelmed with stress as you attempt to complete daily tasks. They expect up to 3 assessments a day which by the time you go through the assessment and all the documentation and task that go along with it, it will take at least 2.5-3 yrs per assessment. You do the math. Not enough hours in the day. Plus you have other tasks to complete other than your assessments, plus add driving time to home assignments. Unrealistic expectations. You’ll work yourself into unhealthy stress. The company has a good purpose, but doesn’t hire enough employees to carry their mission without overworking their staff. If they would hire the correct amount of nurses/social workers needed and stop expecting the nurses to carry such a heavy workload, it would be a great place to work. But that would cut into their profit margins. My managers were great, but their hands are tied because of company expectations. The other Con is home visits. You are working with lower income patients and will be expected to go into some sketchy areas.  I had some bad experiences and went to some places that I felt very uncomfortable. 

This was a great position due to the remote nature of the work, lots of flexibility, and autonomy. Sometimes you really can help patients, other times it is a lot of calls and repetition/lack of engagement in the program.

The real issue is with leadership - the company's mission is good but they seemed to lose their direction; kidney care was the focus when I started working in 2021 but we seemed to slowly and continuously stray away from that. There was also a serious lack of communication from upper management about client expectations for our workload and many contradictions. For example, we would get a quarterly bonus for meeting goals one week, and the next week get a lecture about how we are underperforming and our clients are unhappy. Furthermore, reports on our performance metrics were constantly wrong, and this is what was being reported to our clients. As a result, we lost a major client contract, and the entire NY team was laid off.

Lots of constant change and procedures were different between teams depending on who your manager was. Overall the company has a lot of potential but needs to tidy up their processes.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Patient advocate 52 salaries reported	$22.63 per hour
Registered nurse manager 6 salaries reported	$83,833 per year
Case manager 13 salaries reported	$90,538 per year
Liaison 23 salaries reported	$25.20 per hour
Transit manager 7 salaries reported	$85,286 per year

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