Pros
When I first started with Stronger Oregon during its first few years it was a good company to work for. It was much smaller than what it is now, and ran like a private practice. Most clinicians had a lot of freedom to run their own practice, and support was there if you needed it. We were also well paid. But over the years it has really crumbled. They expanded to over 250 therapists in just a year and a half, however their leadership team has remained the same 4 people. There is one clinical director who overseas 250 therapists! This is unethical! Now when you reach out to the clinical team for support or crisis nobody responds, literally nobody responds. They also suddenly started implementing tons and tons of policies, every week there's a new policy. It's hard to keep up. And the emails from the CEO, Josh, are demeaning and demoralizing. These changes are clearly not working for the clinicians as some of their top clinicians who have been there from the start have been leaving in drones over the last six months. I started to notice some of my favorite colleagues leaving, and now every week it seems like a new one is out the door. most people have been there since the beginning have already left, or getting ready to leave. Leadership is not investing in their providers, they're not giving us any training or providing CEUs, they're just using us to build a conglomerate. There's also only a one percent match on 401k, when this is a multimillion dollar company. I've received better benefits at smaller practices. It's clear that the change has shifted from running a private practice to a Community Behavioral health corporation. They're just using the clinicians to make money and grow the company, but they don't have the pillars of support there. There's no clinical team, there's no training, and the people coming in for therapy are more and more acute with more intense issues, because Stronger Oregon comes up first in Google searches for therapy. As an associate I was expected to see bipolar one clients (over telehealth) and acute clients that I was not properly trained for. These are specialized populations that you must have additional training in order to see, yet these people are scheduled into my calendar all the time. There's also a really high turnover rate with the intake team, because their manager is abusive to people. Leadership refuses to address Vanessa who treats people like crap. This is baffling to me.
Cons
The entire company is run by four people, and some of them are very toxic. They are abusive to employees, and when people complain about these people in leadership, excuses are made for them, or you are gaslit. They are probably the reason why Therapists are leaving. They need help addressing their diversity equity and inclusion. It's nonexistent. I have experienced antisemitism multiple times, even from leadership. They also encourage clinicians to refrain from billing in certain ways that are fraudulent so that they can work with more Medicaid clients. If Josh continues to run his business like this, they're going to get into trouble. It feels too risky to work here anymore. Like everyone else, I'm looking to leave, if I can spare any other clinicians from enduring this, that's just my goal.
