Curo's Sick Model and Bad Technology

Strange Tony,

I'm afraid our hospice is terminal from severe management disease.  It began a year ago when Humana purchased our hospice and placed us under Curo Health Service CEO Larry Graham. What they've done together to our site is a crying shame.

Executives knew the plan and the corresponding carnage it would cause.  Step One:  They handcuffed a few people they thought critical to the company's success with retention bonuses.  Step Two:  Once these people were strapped down the firings began.  The terminations haven't stopped.  In an employee update call executives referred to their mendacious plans as a "bumpy year for employees."

Nothing about their plan respected teamwork, once a hallmark of our hospice.  In our heyday everyone mattered.  There were experienced people with time and patience to shepherd new employees.  People were trained to do the job.  No more.

Step Three:  Leave few to no standard bearers.  The few that remain hate what Humana/Curo has done to our hospice.  Curo management has a unique inability to listen.  Step Four:  Label those speaking out as "negative" and deride them for sharing their employee experience.   Ignore that these people were recently the "go to" people for their discipline.

Secure leaders would view what was shared as feedback.  Staff know and have experienced consequences of ongoing management greed and callousness. We just can't honestly share our experiences with anyone up the chain without retaliation.

Executive greed cut nearly everything in the last year, health insurance benefits, holiday pay, staffing, space, color printer, employee appreciation day, floating holiday, post it notes, cellphones, IPADS, computers, employee going away parties and parking spaces.  We just learned some pinhead in Mooresville wants us to pay for parking.  Shaming the Future Together - Curo and Kindred at Home.

They use spreadsheets to underpay staff for miles driven and hours worked.  Loss of pay is compounded by mean girl management, which can viciously cut a hospice heart.  I pray God return to them tenfold what they have foisted on others.

Anonymous

Kindred at Home/Curo Health Employees Tell Friends to Stay Away

Strange Tony,

Management's obsession with measures, big data and artificial intelligence only apply to their greedy priorities.  One year ago Humana bought Curo Health Services, a collection of regional hospices established by financial rapscallions in 2010.   Humana placed Kindred at Home's hospice division under Curo's "innovative" management.  In the last year Curo decimated our once great hospice.

Glassdoor collects data from employees about their experience.  One can look at three companies on Glassdoor to get a feel for Humana's Home portfolio, Kindred at Home, Kindred Hospice and Curo Health Services.  As Curo management has been innovative in the ways they've tortured our hospice let's start there.

Less than half of Curo's employees support its leadership, believe in its future and would recommend a friend work alongside them:

Roughly a third of Kindred at Home employees would recommend the company to a friend (35%) and have a positive business outlook (36%).

Leadership leaves Kindred at Home and Curo employees uninspired, which can be seen in Curo's overall rating trend from employees:

I did not see one regional executive visit our office from July 2018 to July 2019.  Feedback, like excrement, only goes one way, downhill.

Homecare Homebase's garbage in-garbage out hospice system has been a time killer for staff, both clinical and office.   

The company's answer to overworked nurses was to make them salaried.  Humana/Curo Executives get an A in Abusive Management 600, a course required by our 60% financial rapscallion owners.  Abuse leads to no hope.

Yet employees know who is responsible.

Each graph peaked as Humana bought Kindred at Home and Curo Health Services.  Employees experienced harm after these deals and the ratings slide began.

The company has a consistent artificial response to those raising issues of no raises, horrible management and declining quality care. 

Employees may be the heart in that we keep pumping but the company has shown us no love.   How long will workers stay under executive disdain, hollow phrases and false embraces?

Anonymous

Kindred Barely Mentioned in Earnings Call

Strange Tony,

Humana held its Q2 earnings call and Kindred got but a few mentions.  Most of those are below:

In the home through our minority investment in Kindred at Home, we are piloting value-based care models in multiple markets and continue to see encouraging results from a standalone financial perspective for Kindred at Home, and from the standpoint of delivering improved clinical outcomes for our members. To usher in the next wave of integration, Humana and Kindred at Home have invested in an interdisciplinary team of clinicians responsible for taking the best practices gleaned from pilot markets and applying those learnings across Kindred’s broad geographic footprint.

... healthcare services is performing above expectations and we increased our adjusted EBITDA guidance for the full year by approximately $40 million ...  Our home business, including Kindred at Home, is performing well.  

....having new distribution channels that we’ve created, whether it’s Kindred or a PIPC or other areas where we can engage our members in different ways, that’s why we continue to invest those channels and in the technology that supports it so we can continue to manage our medical costs.   

All of our costs are estimated, and so it’s important to identify these early warning systems that can allow us to identify the issues and then create the clinical programs and the customer engagement platform, and frankly the analytics to be able to identify who needs the intervention. We continue to invest in that. We’re nowhere near where we need to be.  

I would say that the outperformance is pretty balanced across the board...  Where we’re seeing, I’d say, greater percentage outperformance is on the Kindred side.   ... the Kindred team is really executing on the business plan.

Humana's 40% interest in Kindred's earnings grew 300% from Q1.  Historically the first six months delivered stronger hospice volumes and revenues than the latter half of the year.  

Humana/Curo operated our Kindred Hospice as a cost center that needs massive ongoing cuts.  So far dramatic reductions in service levels have not translated to reduced patient census.  They have hurt billing.  At one point our hospice had $750,000 in unbilled care.  That's been cut in half.   

Before Humana/Curo foisted cumbersome Homecare Homebase on our hospice our unbilled revenue rarely reached $75,000.  That was under higher volumes.  

Humana and partner financial rapscallions milk our hospice at the expense of quality clinical care.  We're nowhere where we used to be. 

Anonymous