Pros
Caring staff who provide excellent therapy to the patients. Surveys done by patients and family members after discharge have high praise for the therapy staff. LTC residents like to come and spend time in the gym just to enjoy the staff.
Kontras
It's all about the money...assistants are expected to be 95% productive, and if they do not meet that expectation daily, the program manager has to submit a report to the supervisor each morning explaining what they are going to do about it. The staff are also not given credit for all of the therapy time they actually provide; the report that was required to be used subtracted 5% off with the excuse that it accounted for time that therapy was provided over what the planned minutes were. A good program manager and therapy staff will rarely see that occurring. Many of the staff would clock out and continue working to get their work completed stating that they would rather do that than put up with the stress that was put on them by upper management. Productivity expectations are not the same across all regions. The region that I worked in was expected to be at least 50% productive for the program managers across the board and then the expectation was raised to 70% before any PRN staff could be used to keep the costs down. Since some of the buildings have a larger staff and more patients to maintain than others, this should not be the case. There were some buildings that only had 3-4 staff members for the program manager to oversee as compared to the buildings which have 12 staff members. With all the duties that the program manager has it is impossible to be able to maintain that productivity. It was the expectation of the program manager to work late each day and then come in on the weekends to get caught up, and not to put that time into the labor log, so no one really knew how much time was really spent working each week. It is very important to develop a good working relationship with the staff, but the program manager is expected to fill up the caseload first and then give what is left to the rest of the staff, and if one of the patients has to go out to the hospital or is sick, then the program manager is to take a patient from one of the assistants and send them home. Not a good way to develop a good relationship with the staff. Again, it's all about the money. They spend so much money on upper management coming up with all of these new ideas that almost no one has time to do. Why not decrease the upper management, who are nonproductive, and focus on the staff that are doing all the work and making the money for the company. Without them there wouldn't be jobs for anyone. Back off on the ridiculous productivity expectations and let us do what we went to school for and what we want to do...provide the high quality care that the patients need and deserve. Any time that there was a question or concern about expectations the "canned response" was, "It's Genesis's policy", yet when asked to be given the written information on that policy, upper management could not do that. Also, when there were discrepancies between what one region's expectations as compared to other regions the response was, "That is how we do it in our region". Basically, it was "do it my way or it's the highway". As stated in other reviews, everything that the program manager does is micromanaged by upper management. The upper management team is not consistent with their expectations and often will tell you how they want something done, and then forget what they told you and come back on you later wanting to know why you are doing something that way. You don't really know what is expected of you and you feel like you are always walking on egg shells not knowing what is coming next. I was very disappointed by my experience with GRS. Don't believe what they tell you because they will change the rules next week.
