SHUT PPS DOWN

How can a company the size of PPS not realize that they have some serious problems if they read this site? With over 111K of hits or site visits and if half of the complaints are true, (in only the first quarter of 2011 alone) They should look at themselves and find out who, what and why is the management still there!!!!! One would have to also think that the Japanese better retreat again and go home and get leave of the US. This is truly a dysfunctional company with bad leadership with total disregard for the referral and patients that they made commitments to take care of. This is greed at its best
Ask yourself-How many lives has PPS affected, destroyed or put in jeopardy. How many patients Doctors, nurses and most of all employees and their families?? I don’t like government involvement, however we need them for this company. SHUT PPS DOWN

 

In total agreement here. This company was a good company when I started. Patient care was the number one priority. Employees were treated decently and with respect. Since 2006 it has rapidly deteriorated to the point that long time employees and top producers have, and are, leaving enmass. Middle managers know it and are desperate to find other jobs. The trap they have fallen into is, money. They make good money. But they sell their souls for it. No home life, no family life, no free time at all. If they aren't putting in 100 hours plus a week, then they are considered slackers. Top sales producers have the same problem. They can make good money but the demands are never ceasing from the management to get them more, more, more. Management expects the PCC's to get the referral sources, set up patients at night and weekends, go to the hospitals on nights and weekends trolling for business, do the overnight oximetry piece at nights and weekends. "Turn those oximeters over at least twice on the weekend" was a quote I heard often from my manager. And the CMN's. OMG, let's not forget how imperative it was to get those it at any cost. Whether the doctor was still around or not.

As to the government shutting PPS down, well, I believe it is happening now. MCR is on the audit path with PPS and many of the bigger offices have failed their audit repeatedly. If that trend continues, then MCR will pull their license to care for MCR patients. Other insurances will then follow.

Mr. Kane, are you listening. There is still time to turn this around. Do you have what it takes to do it?

 

Nope. I'm afraid times already up. You can't turn around a ship thats more than halfway submereged.

 

I'm in total agreement.

 

Yep.

 

I once asked a high ranking PPS official, "If I was a referral source or an oxygen patient, why should I choose PPS-what sets you apart, what do you do better then the competition; they buy the same cylinders, the same concentrators you do. What is your strength?"
The answer was 60 seconds of silence. The high official could not name anything that PPS did better than anyone else. And that a big problem. Each and every employee of a successful organization can answer that question immediately, without thought. Is it better customer service? Faster service? Local service? Better trained employees? Free cookies if you pick up your tanks instead of having them delivered? Nationwide locations for travelers? Specialization in certain cultural and language patients? PPS employees have nothing to hang their at on. Not even the bosses can state what they do better. So they are forced to cheat, lie, and break laws to stay in business.
As Jed Clampet used to say, "pitiful...just pitiful!"

 

Awesome Post. I would like relate a similar story. When I first interviewed a little over 5 years now, I was coming in with 8 years of DME/o2 on my resume. The two managers at my first sit-down seemed to like that and did not even require a second interview. I wanted to know though what they thought the strength of this company was. Their response? " Well, were not like those other two BIGGER companies, we actually take extreme pride in our patient care, and our employees are for the most part happy and work well as a team". Fast forward to today and I think we can all attest that those days are looong gone." Wanna-be big company " I soon found out. Every move has backfired! Lets restructure, lets have an out of state call center. Lets do sleep setup's over the phone.Lets not worry about the patients we already have, lets grow and focus on getting the numbers up at ALL costs!As for the employees? If your not in upper management, YOU do not matter!! Teamwork my a**. Lower management, CSR's, Techs, are treated as if they are "disposable" with little, or no value. Bitter? No. Dissappointed? OH YEAH! I am now hoping this company does get shut down. Not only for the sake of our patients, but also for the select few employees that still have a little pride and integrity intact.

 

Amen! As a former manager of PPS Let me just say how much I am enjoying reading these sad but true posts. I feel "fully" justified in my hair-trigger decision to part ways two years ago.

 

Becoming a "big company" is more than just buying a bunch of little ones. You have to have an infrastructure designed to manage a big company, and you have to have people able to handle the tasks. PPS has neither.
It starts at the top; it is obvious the CEO has no clue who should be on the PPS bus and who he should have kicked off miles ago. He has allowed his "trusted" incompetents to systematically rid PPS of the talented people that could have moved them in the right direction. He has allowed these same people to take unethical and sometimes illegal shortcuts to hide their incompetence, either knowingly or because of HIS incompetence as a CEO. "Good to Great" is not in his library, apparently.
As for the Japanese; look at the reports of botched and covered up repair work at the nuclear plants in the news lately, and the reports of governmental coverups of the situation. There are incompetent officers in Japanese business as well as US business.
The sad part is the patients who suffer through substandard care until the company is gone, and the good employees who have suffered the stress and worse because of the mismanagement.

 

What would it take to actually shut them down? Even if Medicare is investigating, that doesn't automatically mean that they will be shut down, does it? Wouldn't there have to be some really HUGE problems for that to happen? I know that they had a big audit about ten years ago, and they were heavily fined and slapped on the wrist, but that was about it.

I agree that management is bad and getting steadily worse. I remember something called "The Peter Principal" from management classes about a million years ago. It basically said that people will rise to their level of incompetence, or something like that. You get hired, you do a good job, you get promoted, you do a good job there, you get promoted, and so on, until you reach a place where you are in over your head and you no longer get promoted because you aren't doing such a great job anymore. The problem is, you don't get demoted, or fired either. You just sit at that level doing a lousy job. I'm pretty sure, from what I hear, that this is where most of PPS management is. Clowns.

 

I can only speak on what I know to be fact, and that is N. California has to have the biggest batch of incompetent, brown-nosing managers ever known to the business.

That INCLUDES the corporate clowns in Novato.

Get a clue already!!!

 

Sadly, same situation in the East where the "cream" has definitely not risen to the top.

 

Dear Teijin,
Please do not let this go on any longer. There is certainly enough going in you part of the world to deal with, you no longer need this headache.
Dump this debacle of a company, you will helping and saving lives.
Signed,
Concerned,
" Former " PPS 02 Patient.

 

If an employee gets to a position they can not handle, a great organization finds them a new seat on the bus where they can succeed. Keeping some one in a position they can not handle is not good for employee or employer. Only a failing organization keeps an employee in a job they can not handle. And only a failing organization fires talented employees while many positions those employees excel at are still vacant.

 

that would be the short bus

 

SHUT IT DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yep.

 

And the HITS just keep oooooon coooming!!!

 

I just heard the big M.C is not messing around this time.
Stay tuned..........

 

Please Please let the Medicare officials come to my office!! i am so stressed with having to be forced to forge documents, which I haven't but other co-workers have and I am really under so much pressure I don't think it's worth it. But times are hard out there and with a compute of 35 miles each way with gas costs i need this job but my family is not breaking even after gas expense. i am asked to stop by and "drop off" oximetry and CPAP/BIPAP equipment and I'm not a RT!! Anyone else out there under this pressure, this company is out of control!!