Gabelli Ups Gentiva Stake at Bad Time

NASDAQ reported:

Mario Gabelli increased his holdings in Gentiva Health Services ( GTIV ) by 8.96% on June 13. Gabelli purchased a total of 73,400 shares at an average price of $11.50 per share. Since this transaction, the price per share has decreased approximately 10% and is currently trading around $10.39 per share. Gabelli now owns 892,300 shares of Gentiva, representing approximately 3.1% of the company's shares outstanding. Gabelli's holding history of Gentiva as of March 31.

This conflicts with a June 21 SEC filing showing Gabelli owns 5.2% or 1.6 million shares of Gentiva.  Gabelli funds lost nearly $2.5 million today.

Update 7-9-13:  Gabelli spoke on CNBC at the noon hour.  No mention of his untimely investment in Gentiva.

Generic Hospice Transfers Responsibility to Worker

Anonymous,

Generic Hospice continues its downward slide, which began with employees having to justify compensation through a complex, convoluted clinical ladder program built on scarcity.  Employees doing human resources work continued with a new self-evaluation, which has little to do with the actual work I perform.  Now I get to do the accounting function as well.  As I already help with marketing, I'm doing my job plus:

Human Resources
Accounting
Marketing

All for the same pay I was hired in at   My last plane trip I sat next to a Human Resources professional.  I asked him about the race to the lowest common denominator in Human Resources.  He agreed wholeheartedly, lamenting how HR had become a tool to control expenses and people, while dramatically offering less services to employees.  Human Resources = Employee Abuse, for sure at Generic Hospice, but also at many other companies.

StrangeTony

Human Resources = Employee Abuse

Anonymous,

The last time our Corporate HR person visited they said corporate chiefs "loved us like our Hospice Nurse Aides love their patients".  I nearly blew coffee out my nose.  The more I thought about this attempted pander, it turned into an insult.  How dare this HR bear hug our nurse aides, (who actually know their patient's names and care for them)!

Our Nurse Aides don't conduct exit interviews.  Neither does the company.

Our Nurse Aides don't give raises, much like Generic Hospice sitting on millions in corporate cash.

Our Nurse Aides didn't eliminate the company subsidy for dental and eye insurance, before cutting 40 hours in vacation time for new employees.

Our Nurse Aides are not months late on evaluations, which are verbally positive but lack a corresponding rating.  Evaluations have become a tool for abuse.

Our Nurse Aides didn't rip employees off on mileage reimbursement by shorting them distance and offering a paltry rate per mile. 

Our Nurse Aides have the longest tenure of any group and care deeply about people, not so much about numbers. 

Generic Hospice cares about one thing and one thing only, metrics.  They've proven it repeatedly.  Our site suffered under an abusive, micro-manager for five years. Turnover, especially among clinical people who don't have to take abuse, has been obscene.  Every HR person to visit turned a deaf ear to stories of physical, mental and emotional abuse.

Our Nurses Aides are the antithesis of Generic Hospice.  They care and they give.

StrangeTony  . 

Gentiva Cuts PTO for New Hires in 2013

StrangeTony,

It's a well kept secret within Gentiva that senior leaders cut Paid Time Off for employees hired after January 1, 2013.  Here's the memo that went out to all employees on policy updates:

One has to open the policy to find the change. 

Gentiva now has two classes of non-executive employees, pre and post 1/1/13.  There's no word on the change or why this was necessary.  The number of executive decisions not expressly shared says much about Gentiva's Senior Leaders and Board of Directors.

I believe the PTO cut for new hires will provide funds for employee "pay increases" for "eligible employees" in the third quarter of this year.  A Human Resources Vice President told our site raises would come from Regional Executives, once they met to identify available funds for increases.  I don't know many Regional Leaders with control over company-wide benefit expenses.

The race to the bottom at Gentiva shows no sign of deceleration, where Human Resources is a complete oxymoron.  The department should be renamed Center for Employee Abuse.  At least, that's our site's experience.  How're things at Generic Hospice?

Anonymous