I think there are many reasons why people say that the acquisition by CVS is the worst thing that has ever happened to Coram?
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CVS was never interested in a high touch model of care, which was what Coram was before CVS. CVS could care less about any one employee or any one patient. Look at the BBB complaints as proof of that. . Each staff member is just a detriment to their profit. Awful company. Coram used to be a respectable company where staff were known as being highly skilled professionals. Now other companies laugh when they hear you worked at Coram. There will always be people who work crazy hard and do some shady stuff to help the bottom line, but more and more are seeing the light and getting out while they still have a soul
I worked for Coram back in the late 90"s when they almost closed. They lost a bunch of insurance contracts and their stock plummeted. They floundered for a few years and made a resurgence owned by Apria. Later sold to an investment group-Brookstone-who said continue making a profit and we'll leave you alone. Then Walgreens bought Neighborcare so CVS had to keep up. They thought they knew all about home infusion. Coram continued to make a profit...but customer service deteriorated, employee dissatisfaction skyrocketed. Anyone around during this time could see that the only hope for Coram would be to be sold to a better company. So..here we are today-Walgreens dumpedNeighborcare so CVS once again trying to keep up.
When I first started at Coram, the posters around the office listed the number one goal was along the lines of "patient satisfaction". After the CVS buyout, new posters arrived and the number one goal was something like "driving revenue growth at better than industry standard."
The ones left behind are all feeling terrible for our co-workers and having survivors guilt.
Coram used to be a great, ethical, class-act infusion company. Then CVS came along, bought it, and turned it into a shady, unethical company that only cared about numbers and not the patients. The management is the worst (directors, supervisors, managers). They lied to 100's of us at the Sacramento COE, telling us how great we were and then they layed us off two days ago without any warning or even a hint. This layoff is the 1st round of layoffs. People who still have their jobs there: don't get comfortable. The 2nd round of layoffs is right down the road.
You are correct! CVS thought they could run the home infusion pharmacies in the same way as their retail pharmacies. Couldn’t be farther from the truth! It all came down to the bottom line for CVS. They didn’t care about quality patient care or employee satisfaction. So sad because there was a time Coram was a highly respected provider of home infusion.