Kent Thiry and this board!

[RealityCheck]

This board has achieved something special.  I wonder if anyone else is aware of it?

For years I worked in DaVita and would come home at night appalled at the company culture.  If you have no experience with cults, it won't mean much if I say the company has a cult mentality.  It labors to support the illusion of the brilliance and humanitarianism of CEO, Kent Thirty, with relentless contempt for economic fairness to employees and to patient care.  At my job, as in a cult, employees could not safely speak out.  Managers who tried were fired.   (I would love to explore that subject at length with anyone interested).  So I would come home after work and google, thinking somehwere, some place, somebody must be using the internet to attack the myth.

Every time I found that there were only DaVita-controlled in pages after pages of google lsearches for "DaVita" or "Kent Thiry."   DaVita even managed to plant glowing articles on Kent Thiry in the New York Times.  Their PR is epic.   It is lavishly funded and cunningly devised.

Until yesterday.  I don't know what made me try again, but the second link for a "Kent Thiry"Google search popped up a link to this board, and amazingly, a thread openly critical of Kent Thiry!  I am almost certain DaVita will find a way to suppress the google results.  But for now, it's there for patients, for prospective and current employees, for congressmen becoming increasingly skeptical of the PR because of what they hear from constituents, and for current employees.  I want to say to people who made this board, that thread, and everyone who comes here to share or learn something true:  Thank you.

The thread, by the way, was the one about Kent Thiry explaining DaVita in 82 minutes.  I tried to post on it but a message popped up saying there had been no new posts in a 100 days so I should consider starting a new one.  Thank you to the posters on that thread about Kent Thiry giving his messianic performance to Stanford MBA students.

I still believe one day the scandal that is the difference between DaVita public relations and DaVita reality will explode like other financial crises have:  Enron, savings and loan, the mortgage crisis, even though I suspect Kent Thiry, like Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers and others, may never face criminal charges. 

Maybe the small gesture of coming to this discussion board and presenting accurate, responsible observations will help that happen.  I know I'm new here and I'm eager for any tips on  the history of discussions of this kind.



Edited: Fixed italic tag format - okarol/admin

[okarol]

IHD Founder Epoman had a few things to say about Davita and Kent Thiry.
Here are some related links, including the one you mentioned.
http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?board=28.0
http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=736.0
http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=929.0
http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=14465.0
http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=21118.0
http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=21553.0

Here's a recent News Article http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=23047.0
and there are other news stories found by using the SEARCH bar.

[greg10]

This board has achieved something special.  I wonder if anyone else is aware of it?

For years I worked in DaVita and would come home at night appalled at the company culture. ..
Every time I found that there were only DaVita-controlled in pages after pages of google lsearches for "DaVita" or "Kent Thiry."   DaVita even managed to plant glowing articles on Kent Thiry in the New York Times.  Their PR is epic.   It is lavishly funded and cunningly devised.
..

That is why I thought Thiry was the biggest erection in Colorado since the tallest wind turbine structure was put up in that state.
http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=22976.msg375044#msg375044

[jbeany]

You can  an old post if you have something to add to it or want to draw attention to it again.  Just click through the 100 days message and go ahead and reply to it.  If half a dozen members have already started a discussion that you want to continue, no one minds if you bump to the front of the line again.

[Sluff]

Reality Check; Thank you for your post and for coming here to I Hate Dialysis, Epoman started this site so his posts could not be censored like they were on other message boards. Epoman was a great loss to this board as well as the renal community. He was blunt and to the point which offended many but he refused to bow to the corporate greed and did not believe in sugar coating things. He was a brilliant man and an advocate to the common good of the renal community.

JB Thanks for your post as well.


Sluff/Admin

[RealityCheck]

I suspect there are many people like me working in DaVita, barely tolerating the culture by day and starving for communication with integrity about it in their off hours.  I hope others find this board.

I think everyone in upper management has become conscious that Kent Thiry's monetary compensation is an embarrassment, and was a contributing factor in the government's decision to reduce reimbursement for dialysis treatments.  I have personally heard Pete Stark say as much.  DaVita's answer to that has been to circulate the message that Kent is not accruing this money because he is greedy (he was already a rich man the day of his marriage) but because he plans to run for office and needs a war chest.  The implication is that he is such a wonderful genius, he could do for American what he has done for DaVita, which he and his inner circle say is a miracle, of course.  The other implication is that people who stay close and support him will be rewarded one day with government appointments.  The word was that he would run for congress in Michigan, on the Democratic ticket.

It had more credibility before the recession.  With the collapse of the economy, the era of admiration for corporate executives entered into a phase of frank suspicion of wealthy, overcompensated CEOs.  After the healthcare reform debate, no one is likely to see an overpaid executive who made millions by soaking up tax money intended to care for the sick as a Messiah.

DaVita spent millions lobbying against Healthcare reform that would have benefitted patients.  Do the DaVita patients who get persuaded to join the Dialysis Patient Citizens PAC realize that their network was never mobilized to support reforms that would have ended pre-existing conditions clauses, among other things of major significance to dialysis patients?  DaVita wants the patients organized to call their congressmen ONLY when it benefits the corporate bottomline.

[jbeany]

The word was that he would run for congress in Michigan, on the Democratic ticket.

 A CEO as a Dem?  Is that a typo?

Besides, why aim so low in Michigan?  We just elected a quasi-Republican former businessman with no political experience at all as governor. 

[RealityCheck]

Jbeany, your avatar could have been taken of my den and cat.

But sometimes millionaires fail to buy their place in history.  Look at Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorona, Mitt Romney.....I think there are many recent examples I've mercifully forgotten.

Six or seven years ago, I thought we might one day see Senator Thiry.  With the Obama election, the idea that candidates had to look the way Kent does evaporated.  I think that he now looks a little like the huckster he really is.

Kent ushered in the complete rejection of nurse and physician leadership.  In DaVita, leaders are MBAs from Harvard and Stanford, often hired right out of school.  Anyone who has ever worked for a healthcare organization that is actually physician driven will understand what happens when the MBAs claw their way to the high ground, always with rhetoric they have no life or professional experience of how to connect to the actual daily work of the corporation:  treating kidney failure.  A medical procedure.  If you listen to Kent and those who admire him, you constantly hear them boast that he treated dialysis as a business and made the business work.