Laid off from DaVita.

What DaVita layoffs have meant for employees

Our WARN tracker's seven DaVita filings all come from 2018 and 2019.

The last cuts on record came under a plan DaVita committed to in the fourth quarter of 2022 to increase efficiencies and cost savings in general and administrative support functions. In November 2022 The News Tribune reported more than 200 accounting jobs going at DaVita's Federal Way, Washington, campus, with many of them to be outsourced the next year. DaVita said it was supporting every teammate with "robust financial and non-financial resources," and no WARN notice was on file with the state when the paper checked. DaVita's 2023 results booked $28.5 million of termination and other benefit charges under the plan.

In 2018 and 2019 DaVita sold three businesses outside its dialysis clinics. In June 2018 New Enterprise Associates bought Paladina Health, its direct primary care business with more than 50 offices in 10 states, for around $100 million as CNBC reported it, and Paladina said it planned to keep expanding. The next month Walgreens bought DaVita's prescription-drug unit, and DaVita told Texas it would lay off 869 employees in Coppell. A DaVita spokesman tied that exit to recent changes in the pharmacy industry, saying the company had been looking for a more cost-efficient way to deliver pharmacy services to its patients. Those who stayed with DaVita wouldn't have to relocate, the Dallas Morning News said, because DaVita was keeping operations in Coppell. On June 19, 2019, DaVita finished selling DaVita Medical Group to Optum for $4.34 billion before adjustments. Stockanalysis lists DaVita's year-end headcount at 77,700 for 2018, 65,000 for 2019 and 78,000 for 2025. Our tracker keeps the DaVita Rx and DaVita Medical Group notices out of DaVita's count, since DaVita no longer owns either business.

If you're a director or above and DaVita hands you papers to sign, its filed severance plan is a useful comparison, though the 2021 version may not be the one you're under. As restated in August 2021, it covered common-law employees of DaVita or its wholly owned subsidiaries at director level and up, leaving out contractors and most employees of the international business. For eligible teammates it paid directors 1 to 6 months of base salary by tenure and vice presidents 6 or 12 months, starting within 14 days of their signing, and not revoking, a release and a noncompete. It paid nothing when a job was eliminated because DaVita sold the subsidiary that employed the teammate, which matters at a company that sold three businesses in 2018 and 2019, and resigning before the termination date forfeited the benefit.

That 2021 version measured pay by base salary alone, leaving out overtime, bonuses, commissions and incentive pay, and it cut its payments dollar for dollar by any severance a teammate received under an employment agreement or other pay arrangement. Its first payment was to make up for the time between the termination date and that payment, and neither unused time off nor the severance itself extended the termination date. Stock options, restricted stock units and other long-term awards went by the agreements the teammate had already signed.

Severance under it needed the approval of DaVita's senior vice president of People Services and its assistant general counsel for labor, and it paid nothing when DaVita, in its sole discretion, found material cause, such as a failure to perform job responsibilities or a violation of its policies. A teammate whose job went in a spin-off also got nothing if the spun-off business offered a job by the termination date, whether or not the teammate took it, and DaVita could cancel a layoff or move its date before that day arrived.

Federal WARN isn't the only notice law, since some states also have plant closure laws of their own. If you received a notice or separation papers, the Labor Department's criteria and any plant closure law in your state are worth setting beside them rather than deciding from a head count, and you can look at what our tracker shows for your state.