registered nurse

mental health technician

licensed practical nurse

therapist

security guard

Valle-Vista-Health-System

When I started at Valle Vista they were going through many Administrative changes and with those changes have come several great leaders working together to make a difference for the employees and the patients.  The current CEO that joined Valle in early 2020 (right before the start of the pandemic) has worked very hard to make great strides in improving the hospital for everyone.  The moral of the employees is one of many important items that he has tackled in his short time here. Education and growth for all employees, support for all employees and appreciation for all are just a few of the important facts that we strive to provide.  The employee is not the only focus, this past year there has been a great focus on improving care for our patients as well.  As with all change, it takes time and patience and I have witnessed the changes.  The continued growth as a hospital, the continued behind the scenes work that happens daily to make Valle Vista everything that the CEO, Administrative Council and Leadership know that it can and will be.  
I have recently been given the opportunity to grow into a new role with the amazing support of my peers and our Leadership.  It's been difficult at times, very challenging some days, but I know that I can go to anyone here and ask for guidance or express my concerns and I will be heard and guided when needed.  I feel the support of every single employee at Valle Vista in this new role and that is huge.  If I had to tell someone new to Valle Vista one thing it would be this:  No job is perfect everyday.  We are all human and the job can get to you at times, but when the job starts to get to you, be a part of the solution and not the problem.  You can't just complain and think everything will get better. Talk to your support team, co-workers, Leadership and work together as a TEAM to make changes, to support each other.   Changes are happening at Valle every single day and I personally am thankful and proud to be a part of those changes.  I feel it's a great place to work and I truly enjoy coming to work every single day.  

Management is unresponsive and they give you placating answers to real concerns and make excuses instead of implementing changes. Valle Vista takes people with empathy and a desire to help people and rings all of it out of them until they feel so drained they cannot go on. They will work you into the ground, and frequently ask MHTs to work 16 hour shifts day after day due to being constantly understaffed. I was exploited for my labor for over a year while all attempts to grow into leadership were ignored and I was lead on, all the while being expected to perform at the rate of the leadership position. I was overworked and grossly underpaid, and I got a single dollar more in salary for having a bachelor's degree in psychology. I was excited to start working there and by the end I was so burnt out that I dreaded being there and every day I was angry and bitter. Upper management does not care about you and upped the census limit without having the staff to back it up. The treatment also is not substantial enough for what it costs and they do not receive adequate care because the place is so understaffed. Good experience I guess but disheartening to know that a mental health facility doesn't even care about their staff's mental health. Really not a good place to work, my PTO was denied when I desperately needed it and I felt like I was working extremely hard for little in return. Dealing with suicidal children and that emotional strain for $13 an hour is simply not enough. I really wanted to help and in the end I was so tired that I was not able to give the level of care I expected from myself. I feel sorry for my coworkers who are still there, they were the only good part. I liked my job, but the facility itself is the worst place I have ever worked.

If it wasn't for the amazing staff who all pitch in to help, I would have left a long time ago. Hours and scheduling were always consistent and I had no trouble asking for specific days off. However, the turnover rate is unlike anything I've ever seen. I don't think anyone but maybe 3 nurses still work there who were staffed when I started. The director there when I left was one of the most unprofressional, disrespectful leaders I have ever had the misfortune to work with. Serious issues with staffing and safety are never addressed. You are told everyone is working under your license but management ignore any concerns regarding safety of staff and patients. Hardly anyone cared when you were left on your own, minimal staffing, and high acuity patients. It's all about getting new admits in over and over and over. Forget the fact that admissions take 30 minutes. They want to shove as many as they could like a revolving door in order to have more patients which equal more money. The inconsistent management and subsequent organization was horrible - there were 4 different DON'S during my time there. They ran over the exhausted supervisors who were expected to do the job of 10 people and not get compensated for their late hours or weekends they were forced to work. I stayed as long as I could but decided my integrity as a person and my license was not worth working in a place like that.

Much of management is terrible and HR is unresponsive. They are unwilling to promote internally if they decide they don’t like you, and they make up positions for those that they favor. They try to take advantage of most MHTs and nurses for that matter, hounding people to work overtime since they’re constantly understaffed. They give nurses and MHTs more patients than they can legally handle. The benefits aren’t that good, and it’s hard to use your pto because they never approve it and you basically have to give a month’s notice if you want a day off. They admit dangerous patients, (murders and more), so staff are getting put in extremely harmful situations. They accept patients that should be in the state hospitals. They don’t pay MHTs a fair wage even though they prefer candidates with college degrees. These individuals do housekeeping type duties like taking out trash, picking up dirty towels, and cleaning up vomit. They constantly run out of supplies for the patients, are very disorganized, and allow staff to stay even when they engage in inappropriate activities with coworkers or toward patients. You often don’t get a lunch or maybe a break. They really need to renovate the whole building. 

The only pro is that I loved what I did and enjoyed my time with the patients. It was my cup of tea working with patients with mental illness and addictions. If you don’t like that, you definitely should not work here. 

Although I liked parts of my job, especially my coworkers and the staff, it was hard being a dietitian at this specific behavioral health facility and feeling like you really were making a difference nutritionally for your patients. And that mainly was due to the overall lack of nutrition presence at the facility and lack of nutrition policies even though behavioral health and addiction is so extremely linked to what you eat and how you care for your body. For example, no therapeutic diets were offered, no procedures were established for passing out supplements to patients, consults were not consistently being put in ( many times patients were not consulted to the dietitian that should’ve been including extremely malnourished patients), soda was allowed to children with known behavioral problems, and the menu contained over 3,000 kcals. It was also disheartening as a RD to not see my interventions go through if that was the doctors not ordering/signing my notes or foodservice staff not making what I recommended for a patient. It made my work feel very undervalued. In the end of the day it was about patients being prescribed many medications instead of focusing on their environment and their diet. In the end of the day it’s easier for patients to receive medications, but more effort should be made to find other ways to treat our patients. 


(I do realize there are spelling errors in this review, but for whatever reason the page is not letting me scroll down to correct them. So I apologize in advance. )

Staff are CONSTANTLY OVERWHELMED with patients. You may get 15 discharged AND 15 admissions all on day shift as people run out of insurance days and management hoards the next batch of victims in. The unit stays full with 40 patients for two nurses and 4 MHTs. These  

As a nurse I never had quality time to spend with my patients because we were always focused on the next patient once we got you in the door. I felt like a lot of patients just wandered around the unit for 5 days until they got discharged, they didn't receive any quality treatment. 

And they put psych and detoxing patients in the same rooms together. Needless to say there were a lot of fights that the nurses and MHTs had to break yo. I never felt safe working there. 

Valle Vista also calls itself a hospital,, let's not kid ourselves. They don't even have wheelchairs. There are no IVs. If an actual emergency happened we shipped patients to St. Francis, a real hospital. Yet, the admission staff had the audacity to accept patients who actuially needed a real hospital or rehab due to multiple medical conditions. Then the nursing staff were just sipposed to "figure it out" in terms of caring for these medically unstable patients.

I want to start off by saying that this hospital is totally unsafe and unethical. The staff rarely respond to codes and this is the only mental health facility that I have worked for that has no security. Staff are constantly sent out for medical attention due to patient injury. We are almost always short staffed and I have been put in a position multiple times where I have been the only tech working with 20-30 EXTREMELY aggressive patients. For example, we have a program called Project Create that is designed for inmates to come here to get mental health treatment instead of serving time and is specifically supposed to be for non violent offenders only. The most recent patient from this program had ONLY violent charges and was extremely abusive. We are only armed with minimal ‘safe handling’ training and expected to subdue these patients with almost no assistance. This is not only an extreme danger to employees but an extreme danger to other patients. There are new technicians here making $30 per hour while I make $15 and they have no more experience or qualifications than I do. When I have brought this up to management or HR, they say it will get looked into but never follow up or follow through. This is only the tip of the iceberg. I highly suggest saving any sanity you have left and apply anywhere else. 

I spent several years at Valle, but unfortunately, they were not positive ones. The hospital overall is disorganized, largely due to constant turnover stemming from unrealistic expectations and increasing workloads on everyone except upper management. During my time there (under five years), we had three different Chief Nursing Officers, two HR Directors (they still don’t have a permanent one, with the COO acting as interim), two CEOs, and numerous other management-level positions frequently turning over.

This high turnover creates gaps in documentation and places undue strain on staff, leading many to resign. In HR, for example, the one generalist role has had three different employees fill it within the past year alone. A significant factor driving people away seems to be the current COO’s management style.

While the day-to-day coworkers are wonderful, I cannot recommend Valle as a workplace. The issues with upper management—who prioritize profits over staff and patient well-being—create an environment that is simply not worth the toll on your mental health.

Criminally mismanaged.  They survive only by charging patients thousands daily.

Critical staffing issues at every level.
Housekeeping is operating with 20% of the staff it needs.  Healthcare Technicians, Maintenance, Social work, Intake, Reception, 30%.  Kitchen, nurses, and prescribers, maybe 50%.

Low staffing could be fine, if patient to staff ratio was maintained.  Instead, all beds are kept full at all times.  Many patients would voluntarily check themselves in, see the conditions, and want to leave immediately.  Too often, it was only then they learned that they could not leave.  5% could get out in a few hours.  Everyone else had to wait at least a day.  

Valle Vista truly serves some.  Generously, I estimate that half the patients should be there. 

Most employees quit in weeks.  Those that remain are often the most hardworking, tough, and compassionate people you will see.  At the bottom of the hierarchy, only the best (or masochistic) survive.  At the top, they are lazy, incompetent, and cruel.

Everything is antiquated, dirty, breaking constantly, or completely missing.  Training and orientation are laughable.  

I have been with Valle Vista for a little over six months now and I greatly enjoy it. While working here I have been able to learn more about mental health and addictions., A typical day at work consist of dealing with patients,  parents of patients and other family members. some days are rougher then others people who call in can be very angry because they are scared for their loved ones and it comes out as anger. The hardest part of my job is watching the brokenness in children as they come in to be seen. Watching the sadness in their eyes as they don't know how to express what is going on inside. The most enjoyable part of my job is being able to watch the girls in residential grow and learn how to cope and deal. I love seeing people successfully complete the program and have a positive out look as they are being discharged. I also love all of the people that I work with, the fellow employees here help makes the days better. I know that if something needs to be taken care of I can bring it to the operate person and it will be handled quickly.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 5 salaries reported	$42.90 per hour
Mental health technician 3 salaries reported	$22.00 per hour
Licensed practical nurse 1 salary reported	$24.00 per hour
Therapist 3 salaries reported	$70,000 per year
Security guard 1 salary reported	$15.00 per hour

Working at Valle Vista Health System: Company Overview and Reviews

Valle Vista Health System

Valle Vista Health System Ratings

Popular jobs at Valle Vista Health System

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected