Well that was a jolt. After five years, and literally hundreds of 5 star reviews across a bunch of platforms, we finally got our first sub-5 star review. It was today, and it was 2 stars. I'm sitting here sick to my stomach about it.
And we deserved it.
Let me explain.
To start, I need to tell you a quick story about a nurse who works for a group of doctors I consult with in East Texas. She was making a really nice salary when she got a call from a recruiter who wanted her to work in Houston on a temporary assignment. They offered her $87.50 an hour to work on the Covid unit. But wait, there's more. If she worked Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, the pay was time and a half. If she worked the night shift (overnight) that was time and a half. If she agreed to work overnights on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, it was double time. That's $175 an hour.
One hundred and seventy five dollars AN HOUR. Hold the phone though. If she did three 12 hour shifts, they'd pay her for 40 hours. So for the week she'd get paid $7,000, and only have to work three nights.
If you count on 2 weeks vacation, that is three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. I work with plenty of doctors who don't make that.
Want to hear what's sweeter? They gave her $118 a day for lodging, even though she was only gonna be there three days a week. She's using the money to pay for an AirBnB AND there will be enough left over to pay her mortgage. No kidding. Just for grins they're feeding her three meals a day too.
When she told me she was sorry to be leaving I told her if she didn't take that job I'd have her fired for being an idiot. It's INSANE money. Quite literally four times what she was making with my doctors, and it's not like they were hosing her at around 80 grand a year.
So, as you can imagine, Rapid Recovery can't compete with that. We'd have to charge you $350 for a Rockstar, $1,000 for NAD, and $275 for an Immune Tune, just to break even. We don't average $175 an hour in revenue, much less have it to pay nurses. So, we're having bloody hell keeping them. The ones who do stay are constantly getting called in to the hospital on emergencies because half their unit is out with Covid, or the other half of the unit quit because they didn't want the vaccine, or our nurse got Covid herself.
We're closed today in Shreveport (unexpectedly) because of a death in the family of the nurse who was working. Same with tomorrow. That's what happened that led to a 2-star review. A woman drove all over hell and half the ArkLaTex to get to us... and we were closed.
It's hard enough to find someone to work most days with the way hospitals are paying people, and if someone is out unexpectedly, forget it. Nobody else is just sitting around waiting to fill the gap. We were closed in Sunnyvale when a nurse got Covid. It's one thing after another in the world of nursing these days.
Sometimes these days we're closed before 10, or only open til 3, or just plain screwed. It's mortifying that we've spent five years working to develop a reputation and it's gone to hell in a handbasket in a flash. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what we're going to do. We can't stop taking walk-ins, we can't be closed three days out of the week and still pay the rent, and we aren't going to half-ass it. We may close for a month or two until things go back to normal, or maybe for good. I won't provide a half-assed service. The other option is to compete with hospital pay for nurses, but that means doubling your prices, and even if you were crazy enough to pay that kind of money I couldn't sleep at night charging you that much.
So, I know a lot of you have probably wanted to schedule here or there and found the time blocked, or have walked in only to find out that Jane's kid was sick or Molly took a giant bonus to work at the hospital today so we're closed, and I know that sucks. It's a real two-star situation.
Best I can do today is apologize. We've really worked hard on this place, and I promise you we're doing the best we can. I'm not sure what to do other than pray and apologize and keep trying.
We'll let you know what's up as we learn more and come to some conclusions. By the way, in the meantime, try to call before you load up in the car and potentially waste time trying to walk-in. :-/
