Therapy Insights Practice Reviews

This was the most toxic, unethical, and abusive work environment I have ever witnessed. The owner is actively on meth which he has admitted to therapists and support staff alike, not that it would be hard to pick up on based on the way he speaks, writes, and behaves. He lacks professional boundaries(from gross over sharing about his personal life, to demanding mandatory meetings at 8am on a moments notice for which we were never paid given the fact the majority of the therapists were independent contractors (1099). He hijacked group supervisions, taking away the opportunity for therapists to discuss cases to hold “town halls” which were far from actual town halls and just him ranting at us angrily for an hour, often without clear purpose or direction leaving us all bewildered and feeling unsafe. He has proved he is not a trustworthy or a safe person as his moods shifted throughout the meeting despite him overusing the words safety and transparency and urging therapists to communicate with him. He contacted me at random times all hours of the night and on weekends, often to rant about others, and to threaten me that I would be fired. He used any meeting to vent and lecture therapists often in a word salad, tangential format with wild repetitive gesticulating which is likely the result of his addiction issues. His meetings often lacked purpose and necessity and served to hold us captive to his emotions for an hour(unpaid). He’d send 50+ slack or WhatsApp messages to staff everyday even on weekends, bombarding us with a bareage of alerts, and new changes, videos, personal overshares and video messages of himself, his kids or him kissing a random man on vacation. He showed up to one of my first onboarding meetings in his underwear with his live in boyfriend and on/off paid staff member who he puts into a variety of roles he’s ill-equipped for, shirtless in his underwear in the background as well. He has to constantly make changes. Everyday was a new urgent change, a new staff member hired or fired, a new urgent letter informing of staff changes we must immediately disseminate to our clients. This looked like impulsively changing email accounts, telehealth platforms, WhatsApp and slack channel names, admin staff, admin staff job titles, payroll apps, anything and everything was a daily new change we just had to implement immediately and many changes would be abandoned just as quickly as he urgently made us aware of it. He consistently disregarded our time expecting everything to be read and attended to immediately, without respect for us doing the job he hired us for which is working with clients or for many, also working at other jobs since we were independent contractors and thus part time. Client care, clinical support, rectifying client billing matters and signing off on notes was deprioritized as questions to the owner and admin staff went unanswered for clinicians and clients alike for weeks on end. He’d ramble on during individual meetings disrespecting my time outside of work hours, going on for three hours over video, phone or WhatsApp message (which was his original preferred mode of communication for the practice.) I would ask one question and unless I stroked his ego repeatedly it would lead to no answers to my valid questions , or shaming me for daring to ask and threatening to fire me somehow because of it, He frequently overshared about his life in ways that were inappropriate and uncomfortable from his meth addiction, his sex life, his trauma, and more. He’d hire people then fire them so often the fear of being fired was constantly looming for everyone if you didn’t stroke his ego, “yes”him to death and not ask questions. He’d disparage staff once they were gone to the rest of the practice claiming people stole from him or they were to blame for the issues in the practice. He lied about our former clinical director who he fired,stating she resigned to pursue a private practice when in fact he fired her. He has a history of hiring unqualified people for administrative jobs such as billing and HR and would hire and fire billing teams(5 total in my time there) leaving many clients with unresolved billing issues to the tune of hundreds of dollars without a clear direct way of communicating with anyone that can help them. This has led to many clients dropping out of treatment. Therapists and admin staff who weren’t abruptly and wrongfully fired left because the abuse became too much. He has poor understanding or regard for HIPAA and has engaged in numerous HIPAA violations and ethical transgressions for which he should lose his license, such as having non clinical staff complete clinical documentation for clients such as terminations, and unethical billing practices. His favorite way to fire someone is to abruptly cut off their access to the electronic health records system and disconnect them from the practices slack channels rendering them completely powerless. Clients are then left dropped from access to mental health services and without access to their therapist. If he’s feeling extra reactive he will punitively force therapists to cancel sessions or be unable to complete their documentation without just cause. Since he’s fired so many staff, many clients notes went uncompleted. He hires and fires staff constantly with close to 30 therapists and support staff gone in a matter of a year and a half and the ones not fired left as a result of his behavior. Instead of recognizing his actions he has tried to require all staff sign an NDA to prevent former employees leaving critical reviews. If you need an NDA anyone with any self awareness would realize this is another manipulation tactic to control staff even after they leave. It’s the professional equivalent of an abuser preventing their victim from going to the police or warning others. He has blamed others for why he has lost so many staff in such rapid succession, and lacks accountability and self awareness that he is the sole problem in this practice as everything is done by him even if he hired a new CFO to be his proxy. He tries to force clients to stay with the practice rather than following their therapist when they leave which is illegal and unethical as clients cannot be forced to stay with the practice if they don’t want to. He has consistently taken weeks to pay staff and has refused to pay staff their remaining pay after he fires them and has fought their ability to collect unemployment as he fails to recognize by firing someone they are legally eligible for unemployment benefits. He refers to therapists and other staff as his friends when it suites him to justify his manipulation or get out of confronting the damage he caused, weaponizing that term against you which he did constantly with me. He also has his live-in boyfriend working for the practice in a variety of roles that like everything else change by the owners mood despite this boyfriend having zero management, medical billing, administrative or clinical training or education qualifying him for any of the roles he has been given . He also has shared attraction to clients, and staff, has showed up at clients homes, even spending the night at a clients home and has made racist comments towards the few POC staff he has ever had which is few and far between. Oh and he misgenders staff regularly. Which is why he has so few trans and non binary staff as he struggles with pronouns, and language around this population despite and servicing many gender expansive clients. The list is long and horribly unethical. Do not join. There’s other LGBTQIA affirming by practices that aren’t run by an unstable, corrupt, incompetent and unethical owner. He needs to give this practice to someone actually competent, and stable and go get some help as all he does is cause damage regardless of who he hires to be in charge.