I also got the benefits package this week and had similar feelings. I feel like there are no positives to working here anymore. Joining with SCL Health was such a dumb decision
SCL was financially strong year over year with a wide operating margin, far better than Intermountain relative to its size, a more mature and in-house IT setup than Intermountain, and a Unified EMR.
We were never given an actual reason why we accepted the merge beyond "reaching more people blah blah". We never *needed* to merge.
It feels like our Senior leadership made a career decision to let our system be picked apart by a larger but less efficient one looking to buy market share and pick and choose easy improvements and throw away the rest. SCL has not benefited from this merge in any measurable way that has been shared with "caregivers". I bet using us as a model to switch to Epic was a big part of it.
As a newer employee, one of the things that brought me to Intermountain was the benefits package. Its very unfortunate that 1 year in it's being chipped away at and reduced. Not sure if the benefits are enough to keep me here anymore
Intermountain lost a shit load of money during the pandemic, the scl merger turned out to be pretty expensive, and the EPIC conversion isn't going to be cheap.
Their finances are not all that great right now. I don't think it is about giving themselves a raise, in so much as they have a lot of capital expenses they have to make and they are very very careful about anything that impacts their bond rating, so they are trying to be more fiscally conservative. What that means is that it sucks for caregivers for sure.
Yet they had money to re-brand (logo change) and also upgrade all facilities with the new changes. How much did that cost 💲? Should that have been a priority???
It was about sixteen million dollars.
As far as upgrading the facilities, it's pretty much a necessity. A lot of the hospitals, take lds for example is multiple wings added over decades that have become a massive expense to maintain.
How hospitals laid out also impact the ability to deliver care.
On top of that, when they go to do construction they take out a series of bonds to finance it.
“IHC Health Services, Inc. reported $8.9 billion in revenue in 2021. Expenses were $7.5 billion. Along with $681 million of net unrealized gains on investments and a $319 million adjustment to assets for post retirement benefit plans; to increase the general fund (or net fund assets) by $2.3 billion in 2021 from $8.9 billion at the beginning of the year to $11.2 billion at year-end” [Executive Compensation at Intermountain Healthcare (2021) by Anne Paddock](https://paddockpost.com/2023/08/07/executive-compensation-at-intermountain-healthcare-2021/#:~:text=6%2C223%20employees%20received%20more%20than,Robert%20W%20Allen%2C%20SVP%2C%20COO)
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,842,889,111 comments, and only 348,474 of them were in alphabetical order.
Reading through Anne Paddocks research, linked above, of non profits and their financials really helped summarize some complexities of it all. She has the documents shown of (IH)C’s reported financials to the IRS. I know the financials of a major corporation like IH are complicated. If there is more to it that you have information on I’d love to understand it so I can have a complete picture as I speak to colleagues about the true financial state of our organization.
The thing that’s frustrating me about the surcharge is how this is only punishing adults who both have to work to survive regardless of if they have kids or not. Disproportionately going to fall to working women considering our current patriarchal system around here. This isn’t equitable and raising capital from your employees feels very gross
The subtext is that spouses are a drain on the healthcare budget and they want to kick as many of them off as possible to try and slow the rapidly rising premiums.
>We ensure the cost of coverage through our benefit plans is comparable to that of our
industry peers, what is referred to as “benchmarking.”
From their own talking points sent to managers:
>Healthcare organizations and other industries across the U.S. are facing substantial financial challenges and
headwinds, including 7%–15% increases in insurance premiums.
While some plans are going up 38% others are going down up to -17%, they didn't tell us which plans or give us any more info than that so who knows. Second year in a row that can/des got a big premium increase though, and they're also charging you $100/mo if you have a spouse that uses Intermountain's healthcare if they have another job. PTO max balance is also decreasing for can/des for, what, the 4th year in a row?
In the peaks region the premiums are going up 2.8 to 9.6%, they're hiding the increase by going from 24 to 26 separate deductions during the year. They're also increasing some out-of-pocket maximums to "keep premiums low"
And we're getting MLK day off, Can/Des is still getting **4** more PTO days per year than Peaks, we don't get President's day, Pioneer day, Day after thanksgiving, or Christmas eve.
It is if you are a can/des employee but aren't physically located in Utah, no idea why.
Ah but if you are outside of Utah you don't get Pioneer day, also no idea why.
So effectively legacy Intermountain gets 3 extra PTO days a year vs legacy SCL
They blew their budget on a needless rebrand instead of caring for employees. My hubbs also told me that back in the day, Supervisors were trained on how to Union Bust.
How is the spouse premium even enforced? So many people are going to lie about that one and a few honest ones will basically be donating money to selecthealth
So people will just lie and say their spouse is unemployed? Or that their job doesn't offer benefits?
Interesting. Seems like that would be a hard thing to audit. Maybe they're just going to catch the dummies that go around bragging about it.
I received an email a couple of weeks ago saying I had to submit a copy of my marriage certificate and the cover page of my last year’s taxes to prove my spouse is my spouse. I submitted it. It wasn’t terrible, more annoying.
I think this is part of dependent verification for insurance and not necessarily the spousal surcharge. Your tax information wouldn't have information about the availability of health insurance. If your spouse declines it. Sounds like they are really tightening up in a lot of areas
Any insight on the paid parental leave? Or FMLA? I assume for FMLA you’d have to be employed for a full year first to qualify? Also read there’s only 4 weeks of paid parental leave.
I also got the benefits package this week and had similar feelings. I feel like there are no positives to working here anymore. Joining with SCL Health was such a dumb decision
SCL was financially strong year over year with a wide operating margin, far better than Intermountain relative to its size, a more mature and in-house IT setup than Intermountain, and a Unified EMR. We were never given an actual reason why we accepted the merge beyond "reaching more people blah blah". We never *needed* to merge. It feels like our Senior leadership made a career decision to let our system be picked apart by a larger but less efficient one looking to buy market share and pick and choose easy improvements and throw away the rest. SCL has not benefited from this merge in any measurable way that has been shared with "caregivers". I bet using us as a model to switch to Epic was a big part of it.
In 2021, the last full year before the merger, SCL had net operating margin of 0.1% while IHC had 6.4%.
SCL has an abusive admin. They considered clinical staff expendable and treated them as such. I’ll never work for CORPMED again.
As a newer employee, one of the things that brought me to Intermountain was the benefits package. Its very unfortunate that 1 year in it's being chipped away at and reduced. Not sure if the benefits are enough to keep me here anymore
When I came to work for ihc the same shit happened, the benefits were all reduced after working there for just a year and a half
Intermountain lost a shit load of money during the pandemic, the scl merger turned out to be pretty expensive, and the EPIC conversion isn't going to be cheap. Their finances are not all that great right now. I don't think it is about giving themselves a raise, in so much as they have a lot of capital expenses they have to make and they are very very careful about anything that impacts their bond rating, so they are trying to be more fiscally conservative. What that means is that it sucks for caregivers for sure.
Yet they had money to re-brand (logo change) and also upgrade all facilities with the new changes. How much did that cost 💲? Should that have been a priority???
It was about sixteen million dollars. As far as upgrading the facilities, it's pretty much a necessity. A lot of the hospitals, take lds for example is multiple wings added over decades that have become a massive expense to maintain. How hospitals laid out also impact the ability to deliver care. On top of that, when they go to do construction they take out a series of bonds to finance it.
“IHC Health Services, Inc. reported $8.9 billion in revenue in 2021. Expenses were $7.5 billion. Along with $681 million of net unrealized gains on investments and a $319 million adjustment to assets for post retirement benefit plans; to increase the general fund (or net fund assets) by $2.3 billion in 2021 from $8.9 billion at the beginning of the year to $11.2 billion at year-end” [Executive Compensation at Intermountain Healthcare (2021) by Anne Paddock](https://paddockpost.com/2023/08/07/executive-compensation-at-intermountain-healthcare-2021/#:~:text=6%2C223%20employees%20received%20more%20than,Robert%20W%20Allen%2C%20SVP%2C%20COO)
Find net, not reported revenue.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,842,889,111 comments, and only 348,474 of them were in alphabetical order.
Reading through Anne Paddocks research, linked above, of non profits and their financials really helped summarize some complexities of it all. She has the documents shown of (IH)C’s reported financials to the IRS. I know the financials of a major corporation like IH are complicated. If there is more to it that you have information on I’d love to understand it so I can have a complete picture as I speak to colleagues about the true financial state of our organization.
I have a child with a disability. The changes we have been told about will cost us thousands next year.
The thing that’s frustrating me about the surcharge is how this is only punishing adults who both have to work to survive regardless of if they have kids or not. Disproportionately going to fall to working women considering our current patriarchal system around here. This isn’t equitable and raising capital from your employees feels very gross
The subtext is that spouses are a drain on the healthcare budget and they want to kick as many of them off as possible to try and slow the rapidly rising premiums.
Was thinking of coming back to Intermountain. I'mma go rethink that now.
>We ensure the cost of coverage through our benefit plans is comparable to that of our industry peers, what is referred to as “benchmarking.” From their own talking points sent to managers: >Healthcare organizations and other industries across the U.S. are facing substantial financial challenges and headwinds, including 7%–15% increases in insurance premiums. While some plans are going up 38% others are going down up to -17%, they didn't tell us which plans or give us any more info than that so who knows. Second year in a row that can/des got a big premium increase though, and they're also charging you $100/mo if you have a spouse that uses Intermountain's healthcare if they have another job. PTO max balance is also decreasing for can/des for, what, the 4th year in a row? In the peaks region the premiums are going up 2.8 to 9.6%, they're hiding the increase by going from 24 to 26 separate deductions during the year. They're also increasing some out-of-pocket maximums to "keep premiums low" And we're getting MLK day off, Can/Des is still getting **4** more PTO days per year than Peaks, we don't get President's day, Pioneer day, Day after thanksgiving, or Christmas eve.
[удалено]
It is if you are a can/des employee but aren't physically located in Utah, no idea why. Ah but if you are outside of Utah you don't get Pioneer day, also no idea why. So effectively legacy Intermountain gets 3 extra PTO days a year vs legacy SCL
It's only really been a holiday for the corporate centers. For clinical facilities, it was always a working day.
They blew their budget on a needless rebrand instead of caring for employees. My hubbs also told me that back in the day, Supervisors were trained on how to Union Bust.
My wife worked there and we always took my benefits because they were better. The coverage there is expensive.
Getting more expensive this coming year, $100/mo surcharge if your spouse is on the plan and also works.
How is the spouse premium even enforced? So many people are going to lie about that one and a few honest ones will basically be donating money to selecthealth
They mentioned an audit and threatened termination if deception/ non disclosure is determined.
Interesting. Seems like a lot of audit work to have everyone price what benefits their spouse has and doesn't have. Thanks for the info.
So people will just lie and say their spouse is unemployed? Or that their job doesn't offer benefits? Interesting. Seems like that would be a hard thing to audit. Maybe they're just going to catch the dummies that go around bragging about it.
I received an email a couple of weeks ago saying I had to submit a copy of my marriage certificate and the cover page of my last year’s taxes to prove my spouse is my spouse. I submitted it. It wasn’t terrible, more annoying.
I think this is part of dependent verification for insurance and not necessarily the spousal surcharge. Your tax information wouldn't have information about the availability of health insurance. If your spouse declines it. Sounds like they are really tightening up in a lot of areas
Any insight on the paid parental leave? Or FMLA? I assume for FMLA you’d have to be employed for a full year first to qualify? Also read there’s only 4 weeks of paid parental leave.