Big town hall brag was that Gainwell landed the California Population Health Management Account.
They have been on that project for 11 months and haven’t delivered anything.
Now big meeting with Karen Shields and the project is on pause. Why? Well in her words “you guys have been writing deliverables that you know nothing about.” Pretty comical that it took a year to realize that Gainwell doesn’t know what they are doing.
This is how Gainwell is operated from the top down. With incompetence.
Honestly how does Gainwell stay in business?
Does anyone really know? Is it lack of competition?
It appears to me that they must throw lots of resources at getting erroneous awards. They certainly should have a terrible reputation in the industry. So disorganized. So poorly operated. Leadership is absolutely horrible. They rarely deliver what they are contracted to do.
There can’t be a Gainwell in 5 years if they continue to operate this way.
I was part of a workforce reduction a few months ago. It wasn’t fun in the beginning. Being laid off sucks. But still being connected to several people that work at Gainwell I can honestly say it was one of the greatest things ever to happen to me.
The leadership at Gainwell is definitely the problem. Things are not going to change there. The company is going to continue to tank and not deliver. Leadership doesn’t know what they are doing. They won’t change. The company is going to continue to decline. My advice is to be looking for a job. Get out. Get out before the place implodes and you are forced to compete for the same jobs as your coworkers when you are all out of a job.
Agree 100%.
The obvious problem is that Gainwell continues to approach the DDIs all the same. And that approach is a massive failure every time. Those leaders want to hold onto their old ways. They know best. But their approach continues to fail.
The employees are just thrown around from account to account. Same approach. Same failure.
Why is no one placing responsibility on the SRVP over all DDI’s? We have had massive failures on every DDI we have implemented over the last year. Major cost overages and penalties accessed by the clients. Maybe it is time to put someone in place that can lead the DDI teams to successful completion? OR are we just bidding our new business so low that we cannot possibly deliver the product on time and in budget?
Almost a month has gone by and there are still people from the CA PHM account that haven’t been reassigned.
Yeah that’s some good leadership right there…
This is pretty much the case for every account I have been part of. GW cannot deliver anything they promise. Leadership refuses to admit that they are incompetent. It really is amazing that Gainwell is still in business.
Definitely a firing.
I wonder how much money that poor performance cost GW? A $340 million dollar contract probably is being settled by the lawyers to determine how to get Gainwell out of the picture for the least amount of money. Should be pretty straightforward 0 things delivered is equal to $0.
That sounds like a firing to me. 10 people cannot do much on a project of that size. The state of California isn’t going to pay $340 million for 10 people in supporting roles.
Gainwell flopped on that project. One of their biggest accounts and they flat out failed.
That is one thing they are good at. Taking states money and failing to deliver.
And the leadership of Karen Shields is nothing short of pathetic. How did she get a position like that? It’s like she’s a junior high school teacher scolding a bunch of students.
50+ people from CA-PHM have been reassigned or will soon to be reassigned to other accounts within Gainwell. There are 10-12 people left and are supporting roles going forward on CA-PHM. The “new” leads are newly hired from outside of Gainwell brought in by Karen Shields.
Well… do you know anyone still working on the account? The team has been reallocated to other projects.
How sure are you!
Doesn’t look like there is going to be any final phases. Word is that Gainwell was fired from the project.
"I was in the meeting with Karen Shields also. She pretty much told the team that they sucked. That they did not know what they were doing. She put everyone on notice. Wanted the team to think about why they were here. Why they work for Gainwell. Why they are working on this project. She knows that the team sucks. That they can’t manage the project. It’s obvious. "
If that's the tone 1/3 of the way into the implementation - the final phases are going to be miserable. Well beyond the misery of the old EDS "Death March" culture. Get away and stay away from this account for your own health!
You can’t change a F-up this big. It’s already happened. It depends on if the state wants to give Gainwell a second chance or not.
If I was in the states shoes I would fire them. Wasted millions on no deliverables over nearly a year. Wow! That’s some incompetence. So now I would have to pay more and wait longer. Yeah I would cut them loose. No benefit from the states point of view to keep Gainwell around.
So how can they fix it?
This is 100% a leadership failure.
They didn’t hire the right people.
They didn’t give proper training.
They didn’t develop a well laid out plan.
They fail to admit that they don’t know what they are doing.
They screwed the state of California out of millions of dollars.
They have given Gainwell a cr-p reputation that is well deserved.
And they screwed the workforce at Gainwell.
I don’t see how anyone inside or out could see it any differently.
There seem to be a number of opinions about what may have gone wrong. Do people see this as a leadership (i.e., management) failure or a failure on the part of the individuals who are actually performing the work tasks and activities (e.g., lack of knowledge, experience, etc.)?
What I sometimes think is that there are a lot of “directors/managers” who actually don’t direct/manage anything. Rather, they sit in many, many meetings together, leaving the oversight and completion of day-to-day work tasks solely to the people who perform the work tasks. And then they wonder why failures occur, deadlines are missed, etc. It’s as if the directors/managers have disengaged themselves from the responsibility for the day-to-day management that work in their departments is being correctly completed in a reasonable time frame.
The contract expires June 30, 2025. It is a 3 year contract. Simple math says this is month 11 of year 1. The original poster is right.
It has been since September. Gainwell has successfully collected all of the requirements into a spreadsheet with their response. Then promptly forgot how to use SharePoint and lost it all. Had to start over collecting the hundreds of pages of requirements. A technology company couldn’t manage SharePoint or excel. Yep that makes a person confident that they know what they are doing.
Gainwell has delivered nothing. There is not too many subs. It’s lack of organization. Lack of simple skills to manage the project. Anyone see a Gantt chart? A timeline with milestones? A high level plan? Yeah I didn’t think so. No one at Gainwell is smart enough to manage that.
All the leads have been removed from the account. Either fired or moved to other projects.
I was in the meeting with Karen Shields also. She pretty much told the team that they sucked. That they did not know what they were doing. She put everyone on notice. Wanted the team to think about why they were here. Why they work for Gainwell. Why they are working on this project. She knows that the team sucks. That they can’t manage the project. It’s obvious.
Anyone on the project been in a meeting that actually went anywhere? That actually made progress towards the finish line? Every one I was in was a bunch of people pretending to be smart. But you could easily tell they didn’t know what they were doing.
The blame is on Gainwell. DHCS knows what they want.
Too many subs? what do you mean
The PHM account signed December 1st. It hasn’t been a year.
There are too many subs on the Gainwell side, too many stakeholders from the state that have a different idea on how the service should work, and DHCS is understaffed plus almost as disorganized as Gainwell.
I have worked on several accounts, including this one. The account knows exactly what they want. Gainwell just hasn’t been able to deliver. Gainwell has made excuse after excuse. It’s not them. It’s definitely Gainwell.
Gainwell just doesn’t have the knowledge or experience to accomplish a project like this. They simply are in way over their heads.
From my point of view the blame rests solely on Gainwell. I don’t see it being successful. I see some struggle over the next few months and then the state firing Gainwell. It’s inevitable.
A year in and no results...no sh-t sherlock. If you've ever worked on an account you know exactly what is going on. The customer has only a vague idea of what they want and the Gainwell team doesn't have the experience to drive the customer through the JAD sessions.
It's a bit shocking that California didn't pick a modern company. Other states will know better after this.
The only chance they have is if the state agreed to a later go live date and they are able to completely change their approach. The leaders need to admit that they don’t know. They need to be open to new ideas.
I basically agree. GWT is not able to get their arms around the sheer size of the project.
In my opinion it is too big of a job for Gainwell. They don’t have the expertise or the right team for the job. Now that they are a year in without any results that puts more pressure on them and they lack the experience to meet the go live date.
What would fix that client account?
Karen Shields will help to drag the company down the drain. Not impressed with her at all.
After poor leadership has gotten the CA team in this position…to point the finger at the team is pathetic. She has no idea what she is doing or how to lead a successful team.
Steer clear of her.
Lotta folks at Gainwell who can't see the forest for the trees! There's a lot of incompetence at the mid level management layers due to short-sighted thinking. Every one is trying to protect their own kingdoms, so they ignore the facts that should drive meaningful and effective change for the greater good.
The Gainwell employees working at the CA account are surprised by this news. That is amazing to me. That is how deep the problem goes. The sheer inability to see that Gainwell has a HUGE problem is amazing.
And guess what their answer is? Hire some more people to fix the problem.
Layoffs coming right up…
CEO met with the California customer. California said they can’t see how Gainwell is going to get from where they are to the goal that California wants. They are sending a corrective action letter to Gainwell.
If Gainwell has delivered nothing in 11 months I can see why California is frustrated.
Gainwell is going to mess around and lose the biggest account they have.
That ineptness runs deep at Gainwell Technologies.
It’s sad how inept they are. There is potential to be something great. But being managed the way that it is there will be no success.
This company is going to slowly spiral downward. There is no other option.