The atmosphere is lousy. People are treated like office equipment. There is no longterm direction or clear goals. I worked there for 7 years & it always felt like we were flying by the seat of our pants. The stress level is off the charts and it doesn't have to be. I feel like the company only cared about making money. Here we were processing claims for some of the most vulnerable of our population but there was never any concern for the patient or the doctors treating them. Their policy seemed to be to screw around long enough to wear the providers down until they gave up trying to get payment. As hard as it was to get proper payment out of Centene, no wonder providers are leary about taking on Medicaid patients. I found it deplorable. When any questions were raised about why we were taking on new states when we couldn't handle the ones we already had, they said it was growth. Any questions regarding the company itself were answered with statements of how the pay and benefits were good and if you didn't like it you could go elsewhere. The company is very "Top-Down" and there is no meaningful way for lowly workers to share ideas or suggestions. Management was very defensive and resistant to any ideas from underlings. I came to Centene with nearly 10 years of medical insurance experience and even when I found glaring errors in processing policies, I was told that "that was just how they do it." I even copied an entry from the CPT manual to back me up and contacted everyone I could think of ... no luck. A couple of years later, someone with a better title than me must have discovered the same policy error because it finally did get changed. Who knows how many claims were underpaid in the years preceding. I came from an atmosphere at my old company where everyone had a voice and the goal was to do it right the first time and if adjustments were needed down the road, take care to get those right. The patients and providers mattered. At Centene, the policy was just to shove it through, right or wrong and adjust it later, right or wrong (& possibly multiple times) ... which is a horrible, costly policy. Is the company growing? Sure, they are taking on new business all the time. Plans are dropping all the time, too, though. I truly believe that the only reason Centene is doing as well as it is is because there aren't enough reputable companies in the Medicaid business.
