Thread regarding Ascension Health layoffs

Took me less than a week of being gone to realize that I'd NEVER go back to that dumpster fire again.

That was my conclusion, as well, when I was an Ascension Technologies employee.

• The CEO and his entourage of executives at Ascension headquarters never visited my hospital campus and appeared to be clueless about the incompetent performance of invisible, yet powerful Ascension subsidiary organizations such as The Resource Group and Medxcel.

• My hospital facilities were literally falling apart before my very eyes and Ascension leadership seemed to take delight in the dysfunction that pummeled my colleagues and myself as we struggled from hour to hour in a desperate attempt to do our jobs with inadequate tools and resources.

• The Ascension culture seemed to thrive on a demented, domination/submission power dynamic where executives felt free to treat "associates" with unspeakable disrespect and disregard.

• Ascension Technologies: a dire mess with leadership insistent on maintaining a d-mb, failed, multi-vendor communications system that guaranteed Ascension would operate like a "confused, loose confederation of disparate hospitals" as opposed to becoming "One Ascension" the term that was constantly bandied about during the frequent executive retreats (junkets) filled with vacuous lip service.

The place runs just like the all too familiar formula when a private equity fund takes over a failed business: Vicious layoffs. Cut costs to the bone and then configure the organization to maximize the amount of money going into the pockets of those who consider themselves to be "owners."

That's the key flaw with Ascension and with the American not-for-profit hospital system in general. Are the executives truly the owners? Seems to me if the American taxpayer is subsidizing the system, then the American taxpayer's interests SHOULD also be considered in a significant way, requiring the hospital system to adhere to community values, which one would assume would embrace safe levels of staffing and creation of a hospital campus environment that conforms to industry standards and celebrates the benefits of quality communication/education and preventive health care.

What we see with Ascension is truly a public failure.

It is going really well. We need to outsource the CEO next.