One Medical Reviews

One medical... where can I start? Despite all of the flashy furniture and stylish advertisements, One Medical is a for profit company at its core. The company went public in 2020 and ever since then it's apparently all been downhill. Welcome to the McDonald's of healthcare. When you take a for profit system where all that matters is the bottom line and you combine it with primary care, One Medical is the result. There is almost too much to type out here but I will take the time to articulate why this is not a company that physicians should work for. - The vast majority of the patients are members who pay an annual $199 fee (or they received a membership from their places of employment). Naturally this attracts a certain type of patient population. In fact, take a look at where most One Medical offices are located and you'll see exactly what type of clientele they are catering to while preaching "diversity and inclusion." Don't make me spell it out for you. In any case, the patients are very entitled and have the ability to review you after their visit which as you can imagine can lead to all sorts of mishaps. In fact, if you receive a low Net Promoter Score (NPS, yes they use those here), you get to have a meeting with your supervisor to go over what may have gone wrong during the visit even though it may not have been your fault (ie the patient was late and you had to shorten the visit as a result). I'm not sure how you feel but this is not the way healthcare should be run and it sounds like a dystopian hellscape to me (which it is). - The patients will feel like they have a sense of entitlement because of their membership and will come to you for the littlest thing. Furthermore as I alluded to above the membership and location of the clinics selects for a healthier and wealthier patient population. For example, my panel had no patients with CHF and only a handful of patients with hypertension or diabetes. Therefore most patients end up coming to you for mundane reasons such as "finger pain" or "stomach aches." I feel as if I have lost a large portion of the medical knowledge I have acquired during my training because the patients at One Medical will come to you for any little reason and think they are somehow dying. This can make for very stressful visits as you can imagine and a large part of your day is indeed urgent care. - The salary for primary care physicians is not competitive at all. You are at the bottom of the barrel if you choose to work here. The company uses its pathetically performing stock as a form of extra payment (RSUs) even though the stock continues to tumble day by day. Believe me, you can make more money working elsewhere with much less stress. - Physicians are expected to do their own vitals and point of care tests (ie rapid strep tests) which is asinine. Furthermore, if your office does not have a nurse you are expected to administer vaccines. And you have to physically perform EKGs (you have to actually place the leads) if the patient has chest pain or is in any way symptomatic. The ridiculousness of board-certified physicians having to perform these tasks doesn't seem to faze the company's senior leadership. I did not go to medical school to take vitals. Although you have 30 minutes for each patient visit, you have to make time for these tasks and thus the actual time you are performing the history and examination ends up being closer to 20 minutes. I myself didn't personally realize how much time these tasks take until I started working for the company and as a result I now appreciate the important role medical assistants play in the healthcare ecosystem even more. However the company refuses to hire medical assistants all in the name of "increasing time between the provider and the patient" although the real reason is probably because the company thinks it can use its providers as task rabbits to save a quick buck. Although the company preaches its 16 patient cap per day and 30 minute appointment slots as the solution to provider burnout, it is anything but that. Because you are doing the above tasks on your own, you are constantly on your feet with no breathing room during the work day all at the same time trying to finish your notes. The lower than average compensation with the lack of RVUs is the real gut wrencher. Despite what they would like you to believe, you are working just as hard if not harder on some days as a PCP in a traditional medical office despite getting paid less and not enjoying the perks of RVUs. - One Medical is contributing to the growing inequality in healthcare in this country. The company does not accept any form of Medicaid and the way it treats Medicaid patients is absolutely disgusting (ie they are treated as vermin that are to be shood away if they seek care). Granted, the company does on occasion waive membership fees for select patients but if you have Medicaid, you still cannot be seen unless you want to pay out of pocket. This is primary care for the rich and entitled. - As a PCP you do have one day "off" per week but in reality you are catching up on inbox management during your "off" day. Of course they don't tell you this during your orientation. The inbox system at this practice is one of the major contributors of burnout due to the way in which it is set up. Since there is no MA, you have to review each and every patient message, lab result, imaging result, and task that comes to you. And you betcha the patients here will utilize the messaging system since it is one of the perks of the membership; not only that but you are expected to respond to patient messages within 24 hours even on days that you are working. And they will of course message you for any little thing that in a normal practice an MA would take care of such as wanting a referral sent to a different facility, having issues getting a hold of a specialist's office, etc. You can't use your "off" day to do all of your tasks at once since the company expects you to do them within a short timeframe for customer satisfaction. There is no admin time built into your day. As you can imagine this can lead to burnout and the physician getting overwhelmed. The company touts itself as having solved physician burnout by using AI that is built into the EMR to automatically route some tasks but that is anything but the case. - Speaking of the EMR (which they also are proud of), it's nothing to call home about. The EMR is missing many features of other EMRs such as automatically populating healthcare screening recommendations based on the patient's age /gender (ie you have to manually put in the screening or vaccine recommendation yourself). Furthermore, the patients often receive questionnaires before their visits (ie before their physical) but for whatever reason the answers are not automatically populated into the EMR. You have to manually enter in the answers yourself (ie how much a patient drinks). The EMR does not make life easier despite what they would like you to believe. - The PTO policy is abysmal. There is no sick leave, vacation, or personal leave. Instead, everything is lumped into "PTO." Not only that, they tell hired physicians that they have 3 weeks of PTO during their first year but in actuality this only comes down to 12 days since they are counting your "off" day and the weekend in those 3 weeks. This is by far one of the worst PTO policies I've seen with a healthcare employer. So yes in your entire first year you can only take off 12 days whether that's sick leave, vacation or personal leave. They are nice enough to give 3 additional days for bereavement in case a close family member passes away. - When you start out, patients are scheduled for procedures with you even though you may not perform them. For example, I've had patients with finger lacerations scheduled with me even though I don't perform lac repairs. This is dangerous and stressful for both the physician and the patient. It took the company several months to fix this issue so that I am not having to unnecessarily scan my schedule for patients who want to receive procedures I don't perform. - Although the company preaches its 30 minute visits as a godsend, it is anything but. The company expects you to start appointments on time and end them on time. Except that's not how healthcare works. What makes this policy absurd is that patient's are allowed to be up to 15 minutes late for a physical (and up to 20 minutes late for a regular visit) and you are still expected to see them. Never mind that the patient's often brush off the fact that they are 20 minutes late and still expect you to address all of their complaints. This can cause all sorts of chaos as you can imagine since your whole day is thrown off course. - This company thrives on daily meetings which tend to be uninformative and regurgitate the same information over and over again. But that isn't the worst part. The worst part is that these meetings are during your non-paid lunch hour and you are still expected to attend them. Yep you heard me right. The meetings can last up to 30 minutes at times and therefore take away half off your lunch hour. Absolutely heartless and disgusting for the company to take time away from our only break during the day. - As I mentioned above this is the McDonalds of healthcare. Therefore patients will utilize it as such. You are often seeing someone else's patient because the patient found it convenient to book an appointment with you. Only a few patients will truly stick with one PCP. Most patients will go to one physician for a problem and then if the problem still needs to be addressed they will often jump to another physician just because of availability. This can lead to all sorts of issues as you can imagine due to the lack of continuity of care. You have to spend time getting the history all the way from the beginning because the patient found it convenient to book a visit with you rather than stick with the same provider they saw previously. - Although the company preaches diversity and inclusion, the lack of BIPOC providers shows that this company is just putting on a facade to look nice. I can count with both hands how many providers of color I knew of in my entire city. - This company reeks of toxic positivity. They are all about CI-CARE (look up what it means) although those at the frontlines (providers, nurses, admins, and phlebs) are becoming overwhelmed because the company is expanding too rapidly. Many offices are understaffed and office staff are constantly leaving like there's a revolving door. If you work at a busier office, each and every day feels like complete chaos. Moreover, if you bring any concerns up to your senior management, you are gaslighted into oblivion. If you for example mention that medical assistants would make the providers' days much easier and more productive, you are told that this is just the way the company operates and that you should just learn how to be self-sufficient. The company claims that it thrives on feedback; however that's anything but the case.

I could probably max out the word count on this, so I will list the main highlights: 1) This is NOT a provider friendly organization. Despite what they'll tell you in the interview process, this organization is not the solution to provider burnout. In fact, of all the places I've worked at since graduating residency, I have never seen an organization that has treated their providers more like the diaper of medicine where all the garbage trickles down to us like One Medical does. The desktop medicine "support" that is advertised in the form of VMT (virtual medical team) simply doesn't exist in its current state. Part of this is because One Medical has expanded too rapidly AND providers are leaving (for example, over the summer of 2021, 15+ providers left CA), leaving a major shortage of qualified individuals to handle this work. Patients' messages will be unanswered for 5-7 DAYS, when the turn around times are supposed to be within 24-48 hours. VMT backlogs are so overwhelmed that they've actually mandated our district to be "task fairies" (rebranded to task buddies because their initial "cute" choice of words was poorly received) for in office providers to do this work. I am all for helping out our fellow colleagues, but when you look at the serious harms that this model can entail (for example, labs showing an AKI on CKD3 for one of my patients that sat for 5 days until I came back into office) AND also knowing that task queues for our admin team has numbered in the 1000s and sat for several months without being touched, this shows a systemic problem they have not yet figured out how to address. In fact, it's been like this since the beginning of the pandemic. Meanwhile patient care will suffer, and I anticipate there will be safety events that I'm glad I won't be a part of anymore. 2) We were told OM's solution is to hire 100s of new providers, but they have ZERO retention strategies. They do hire great people, but if you don't drink their Kool Aid and continue to bring up concerns, you are gaslit into infinity or until you quit. What concerns, might you ask? Let's start with the fact that OM does not require BLS/CPR certification for any of their employees and yet somehow we've been giving COVID vaccines, monitoring patients for signs of anaphylaxis without knowing if our providers have updated life sustaining intervention training. Another red flag - our privacy screens in our street facing rooms were see-through during evening hours for EIGHTEEN months, meaning people walking by could look in during an evening PAP exam, for example. As of the day I quit, there was still no resolution to this concern despite it being "escalated" for months. The accumulation of serious concerns like these two of many instances is something that outweighs any benefits of staying employed at this organization. Leadership will ask you to escalate concerns again and again, then do absolutely nothing to address them and often times will tell you the issues you raise are actually a "personal" problem. The things that will "retain" providers are laughable - looking at the MGMA 2021 compensation data, provider salaries are at the 15-20th %ile. Moreover, they dangle RSU stock incentives as if their declining stock values mean anything (value has gone down 50% since they were first granted to me). Finally, they lure you in with the promise of being able to complete all your work during your work hours, but in reality they actually expect you to work an additional 8-10 hours of your personal time in order for you to complete your inbox management, for less pay than you'd get doing this at another organization, mind you. 3) For a tech startup company, their EMR is underwhelming. Upon starting, it became immediately clear to me that OM hasn't compared their product with the newest generation of EMR's in the last 5 years. They are so proud of their EMR, and yet the functionality performs at the level of an MS-DOS operating system compared to Apple's newest iOS version. Don't be distracted by the shiny app patients use - what providers and team members use is a far cry from that. From scrolling down the timeline to find imaging results (their search function is useless because it's apparent there was no naming standardization for a long time), to copying and pasting patient answers on questionnaires, to re-typing out medications and orders in our assessment/plans instead of them wonderfully showing up as it does in EPIC and even ECW, their EMR is a time sinkhole that's hobbled together by a ton of workarounds. One of the most mindboggling things to me is that they haven't quite figured out how to effectively have any appointments that are not just 30 minutes long. Concern for strep throat or rash? 30 minutes. Annual physical? 30 minutes. Medicare AWV? 30 minutes. Their "brilliant" techy system is incapable of dealing with a more logical schedule currently. But, providers are expected to run on time because that's what the company advertises to our patients. It sets you up for failure every . single . day. It's one of the reasons I started off as full time but moved to part time fairly quickly, because every additional day spent at work became something I dreaded. I could go on, but I'll end with this: This whole place reeks of toxic positivity which is used to gaslight employees while ineffective leadership and management skate by on the hard work of the employees. They will wring you dry while at the very same time give themselves accolades for being a "great place to work". In fact, one of the last conversations I had with my former medical director included the phrase, "You will do it, because you're salaried." The thing this company doesn't understand is many of us are willing to stay late until 6:30/7 pm finishing tasks and answering patient messages because our patients deserve great care. But not for this laughable salary. Not for this company. Not for the liability on my medical license. I can do this anywhere else because the truth is, dedicated PCPs are needed everywhere. If you choose to work here, know what you're signing up for. Know that many people use this as a resting place to recuperate from other more toxic work environments, but this place is never intended to be THE forever job. Not even the job that you'll be listing in your 5 year plan. The amount of turnover will worsen because they've shown zero intention of actually listening to the concerns of their employees, despite the insane amount of lip service they devote to it. They chose Amir Rubin, the former CEO of one of the worst healthcare insurance companies to steer this company. Of course OM is going to run like a for-profit company and exploit their workers at every level.