How to Apply to Scripps Health

8 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 125 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Scripps Health is a 16,000-person nonprofit San Diego health system with five hospitals and a long-tenured CEO in Chris Van Gorder.
  • It is distinct from Scripps Research and Scripps Networks; specify Scripps Health in your application materials.
  • Workday is the ATS; clean single-column resumes and exact keyword matches improve ranking.
  • U.S. News rankings in cardiology, orthopedics, neuroscience, and cancer are real differentiators against Sharp, UC San Diego Health, and Kaiser locally.
  • The 2021 ransomware incident and 2024 settlement reshaped IT, security, and operational resilience priorities; expect to discuss them honestly in relevant roles.
  • San Diego cost of living is high relative to nominal healthcare salaries; negotiate with that in mind.
  • Bilingual Spanish, Tagalog, or Chinese skills are practically valuable, not just decorative.
  • Long CEO tenure provides predictability today but eventual succession is a known transition risk worth weighing for senior hires.

About Scripps Health

Scripps Health is a San Diego County nonprofit healthcare system headquartered in La Jolla, California. Founded in 1924 by newspaper heiress and philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, it now employs roughly 16,000 people across five acute-care hospitals and more than 28 outpatient clinics. The hospital footprint includes Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla (the flagship campus, home to the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute), Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas, Scripps Mercy Hospital San Diego in the urban core, Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista in the South Bay, and Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla. Specialty institutes include Scripps Cancer Center, Scripps Clinic (a multispecialty group), Scripps Coastal Medical Center, the Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute, and the Schaetzel Center for Healthy Living. A few naming details matter for candidates. Scripps Health is a separate organization from Scripps Networks Interactive (the HGTV/Food Network parent that Discovery acquired in 2018) and from Scripps Research, the independent biomedical research institute also seeded by the broader Scripps family of philanthropies. References on a resume should specifically say Scripps Health to avoid recruiter confusion. Chris Van Gorder has served as CEO since 2000, an unusually long executive tenure in U.S. healthcare. His background as a former police officer and EMT is part of internal lore, and he is known for hospital rounding, an open-letter staff communication style, and a leadership academy that pushes management training down into frontline ranks. The cultural identifier most often invoked internally is the Above and Beyond patient experience program, which translates into measurable expectations around Press Ganey scores and HCAHPS metrics. Scripps competes in one of the most concentrated healthcare markets in the country. Sharp HealthCare is the largest local system by revenue, UC San Diego Health carries the academic medical center brand, Kaiser Permanente runs a vertically integrated alternative, and Rady Children's, Palomar Health, Tri-City Medical Center, and Naval Medical Center San Diego cover specialty and geographic niches. Scripps differentiates on U.S. News Best Hospitals national rankings in cardiology, orthopedics, neuroscience, and cancer, plus Magnet nursing designation at multiple sites. Candidates should weigh those rankings against the May 2021 ransomware incident that took EHR, MRI, and CT systems offline for roughly four weeks and produced a multimillion-dollar patient settlement in 2024. The aftermath drove substantial IT and security investment that still shapes day-to-day workflows.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Apply through the Scripps careers portal, which runs on Workday; account creatio

    Apply through the Scripps careers portal, which runs on Workday; account creation is required and resume parsing populates fields you should still review by hand.

  2. 2
    Search by facility (La Jolla, Encinitas, Mercy San Diego, Mercy Chula Vista, Gre

    Search by facility (La Jolla, Encinitas, Mercy San Diego, Mercy Chula Vista, Green) because commute distance across San Diego County is a real filter and recruiters expect realistic location preferences.

  3. 3
    Expect an initial recruiter screen within one to three weeks for clinical roles

    Expect an initial recruiter screen within one to three weeks for clinical roles and slightly longer for corporate or IT positions; follow up politely if you hear nothing after fifteen business days.

  4. 4
    Clinical hires move through a hiring manager interview, then peer or panel inter

    Clinical hires move through a hiring manager interview, then peer or panel interviews with charge nurses or department leads, then references, license verification, and background check.

  5. 5
    Nursing candidates should be ready to discuss specific units (telemetry, ICU, ED

    Nursing candidates should be ready to discuss specific units (telemetry, ICU, ED, OR, oncology) and whether they hold or are pursuing relevant certifications such as CCRN, CEN, or OCN.

  6. 6
    Physician and advanced practice provider hiring runs through Scripps Clinic or f

    Physician and advanced practice provider hiring runs through Scripps Clinic or facility medical staff offices and includes credentialing in parallel with offer negotiation.

  7. 7
    Corporate, finance, IT, and revenue cycle roles use standard behavioral intervie

    Corporate, finance, IT, and revenue cycle roles use standard behavioral interviews, often with a written or technical exercise for analyst, engineering, or cybersecurity positions.

  8. 8
    Drug screening, fingerprint Live Scan, occupational health clearance, and proof

    Drug screening, fingerprint Live Scan, occupational health clearance, and proof of immunizations including annual influenza vaccination are required before start date.

  9. 9
    Offers typically include base salary plus a benefits package; negotiate against

    Offers typically include base salary plus a benefits package; negotiate against San Diego cost of living rather than national medians, and ask explicitly about shift differentials, weekend pay, and tuition reimbursement.

  10. 10
    Onboarding is structured and multi-day; expect Epic training for clinical roles,

    Onboarding is structured and multi-day; expect Epic training for clinical roles, mandatory compliance modules, and an Above and Beyond patient experience orientation.

Resume Tips for Scripps Health

recommended

Use Scripps Health as the spelled-out target employer in your cover letter and s

Use Scripps Health as the spelled-out target employer in your cover letter and summary so screeners do not confuse it with Scripps Research or Scripps Networks.

recommended

Mirror the exact job title and three to five keywords from the Workday posting s

Mirror the exact job title and three to five keywords from the Workday posting since Workday parses literal phrases for search and ranking.

recommended

Quantify clinical outcomes where possible: patient volumes, HCAHPS contributions

Quantify clinical outcomes where possible: patient volumes, HCAHPS contributions, fall reduction percentages, central line infection rates, throughput times.

recommended

List California RN, LVN, respiratory therapist, pharmacist, or other licenses wi

List California RN, LVN, respiratory therapist, pharmacist, or other licenses with license number, expiration, and issuing board so credentialing teams can verify quickly.

recommended

Call out certifications relevant to the unit (BLS, ACLS, PALS, NRP, CCRN, CEN, O

Call out certifications relevant to the unit (BLS, ACLS, PALS, NRP, CCRN, CEN, OCN, CNOR) in a dedicated certifications section near the top.

recommended

For non-clinical roles, frame impact in healthcare-relevant terms: revenue cycle

For non-clinical roles, frame impact in healthcare-relevant terms: revenue cycle days, claim denial rates, downtime minutes avoided, audit findings closed.

recommended

Reference Epic experience explicitly if you have it, including modules (Inpatien

Reference Epic experience explicitly if you have it, including modules (Inpatient, ASAP, OpTime, Beaker, Cadence) and any super-user or analyst credentials.

recommended

Keep it to one to two pages for most roles; physicians and senior research staff

Keep it to one to two pages for most roles; physicians and senior research staff may extend to a CV format with publications and grants.

recommended

Avoid heavy graphics, tables, columns, and headshots; Workday parses single-colu

Avoid heavy graphics, tables, columns, and headshots; Workday parses single-column text reliably and scrambles complex layouts.

recommended

Address the San Diego location honestly; if you are relocating, note willingness

Address the San Diego location honestly; if you are relocating, note willingness to relocate at your own expense to avoid being filtered out as a remote-only applicant.

ATS System: Workday

Scripps Health uses Workday as its applicant tracking system, accessed through the careers portal that routes into a Workday-hosted job board. Workday parses uploaded resumes into structured fields and ranks candidates partly on keyword overlap with the job requisition. Recruiters work the candidate list inside Workday and trigger interview scheduling and offer workflows from the same system.

  • Submit a clean PDF or .docx resume parsed from a single-column layout; review the auto-populated profile fields and correct anything Workday misread before submitting.
  • Use the standard section headings Workday expects: Experience, Education, Licenses, Certifications, Skills.
  • Mirror exact phrases from the job description, especially license names, certification acronyms, software names, and unit specialties.
  • Complete the optional questionnaires; many Scripps requisitions use knockout questions on licensure, shift availability, and onsite work that filter applicants automatically.
  • Set up job alerts in Workday because Scripps reposts roles frequently and applying within the first week tends to get more recruiter attention than late applications.

Interview Culture

Scripps interviews lean traditional and behavioral, with strong emphasis on patient experience, teamwork, and cultural alignment with the Above and Beyond program.

For nursing and clinical roles, expect a panel that may include the hiring manager, a charge nurse or shift lead, and sometimes a peer staff nurse. Questions cover clinical scenarios (a deteriorating patient, a difficult family member, a medication error you witnessed), unit fit (why this hospital, why this specialty), and values (describe a time you went above and beyond for a patient). Answers structured with the STAR method land well, and concrete patient stories beat abstract platitudes. Physician and advanced practice interviews are longer and include medical staff leadership, department chairs, and sometimes a full day of meetings with potential colleagues. Corporate, IT, and finance candidates see a recruiter screen, hiring manager interview, and a panel that often includes a peer and a stakeholder from another department. For IT and cybersecurity roles, expect direct discussion of post-2021 lessons learned, segmentation, identity, and incident response readiness; candidates who can speak honestly about ransomware recovery without hype tend to do well. Compensation conversations are usually handled by the recruiter and benchmarked against San Diego market data, which lags coastal tech salaries but compares reasonably to other California health systems. Decisions can take two to six weeks depending on role complexity and credentialing requirements.

What Scripps Health Looks For

  • Demonstrated commitment to patient experience and willingness to talk about specific patients you helped, not just metrics.
  • California licensure or active progress toward it for any clinical role; out-of-state candidates should have a clear endorsement timeline.
  • Comfort with Epic, including specific modules where applicable, since Scripps standardized on Epic and expects ramp efficiency.
  • Cultural fit with the Above and Beyond program, evidenced by examples rather than slogans.
  • Willingness to work onsite in San Diego County; remote and hybrid roles exist but are not the norm outside select corporate functions.
  • For leadership roles, evidence of building teams that retain staff in a tight California nursing labor market.
  • For IT and security roles, post-incident maturity: segmentation, identity, backups, tabletop exercises, vendor risk.
  • Bilingual capability in Spanish, Tagalog, or Mandarin and Cantonese is genuinely useful given San Diego patient demographics.
  • Track record of stability; Scripps values long tenures and tends to ask about job-hopping patterns directly.
  • Mission alignment with a nonprofit, community-rooted health system rather than a venture-backed or private-equity-owned model.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Scripps Health the same as Scripps Research or Scripps Networks?
No. Scripps Health is a nonprofit hospital and clinic system in San Diego County. Scripps Research is a separate biomedical research institute. Scripps Networks Interactive was a media company that Discovery acquired in 2018. All trace back to Scripps family philanthropy but are independent organizations today.
What ATS does Scripps Health use?
Workday. The Scripps careers site routes applicants into a Workday-hosted job board where parsing, screening, scheduling, and offers all happen inside Workday.
Where are Scripps Health hospitals located?
All five acute-care hospitals are in San Diego County: Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas, Scripps Mercy Hospital San Diego downtown, and Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista in the South Bay. Outpatient clinics extend across the county.
How did the 2021 ransomware attack affect Scripps?
A May 2021 ransomware incident took the electronic health record, MRI, and CT systems offline for roughly four weeks, forcing diversion of some patients and manual workarounds. A class action settlement of about 3.5 million dollars was reached with affected patients in 2024. The aftermath drove significant investment in segmentation, identity, backups, and incident response, which still shapes hiring in IT and security.
Is Scripps Health unionized?
Scripps is largely non-union compared to Kaiser Permanente and parts of Sharp HealthCare, where SEIU-UHW and the California Nurses Association have larger footprints. Some Scripps facilities have CNA representation, and there has been periodic union organizing activity. Candidates should ask facility-specific questions during the interview.
How does Scripps compensation compare in the San Diego market?
Compensation is competitive within California health systems and broadly comparable to Sharp and UC San Diego Health, with shift differentials and weekend pay for clinical roles. San Diego cost of living is high, so candidates should negotiate against local benchmarks rather than national medians and ask explicitly about housing assistance, relocation, and tuition reimbursement.
Does Scripps offer remote work?
Most clinical and operational roles are onsite by necessity. A subset of corporate, IT, finance, and revenue cycle positions are hybrid or remote, but Scripps generally expects San Diego County presence for collaboration and on-call coverage.
What clinical specialties is Scripps best known for?
Scripps consistently ranks nationally in U.S. News Best Hospitals for cardiology and heart surgery (anchored by the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute), orthopedics, neuroscience, and cancer care through Scripps Cancer Center. Multiple sites carry Magnet nursing designation.
How long has Chris Van Gorder been CEO and what does that mean for candidates?
Van Gorder has been CEO since 2000, an unusually long tenure for a U.S. health system. That continuity has produced predictable strategy and culture. Candidates joining for senior roles should still ask about succession planning, since eventual transition is a known long-term consideration.
What languages are most useful for patient-facing roles?
English is primary. Spanish is highly valuable given the large Hispanic population and proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border. Tagalog is useful given the size of the local Filipino nursing community, and Mandarin or Cantonese helps with parts of the patient population.
Who are Scripps Health's main competitors for talent?
Sharp HealthCare is the largest local system by revenue and a primary competitor. UC San Diego Health draws candidates seeking an academic medical center. Kaiser Permanente offers a vertically integrated model. Rady Children's, Palomar Health, Tri-City Medical Center, and Naval Medical Center San Diego cover pediatric, North County, coastal, and military niches respectively.
How long does the hiring process usually take?
Two to six weeks is typical from application to offer. Clinical roles with active licensure can move faster; physician credentialing, leadership searches, and IT or security roles requiring specialized backgrounds tend to run longer.

Open Positions

Scripps Health currently has 125 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 125 open positions at Scripps Health

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Sources

  1. Scripps Health official website —
  2. Scripps Health careers portal —
  3. Scripps Health leadership: Chris Van Gorder —
  4. U.S. News Best Hospitals: Scripps La Jolla and Scripps Green —
  5. Scripps Health ransomware incident coverage (HealthITSecurity) —
  6. Scripps Health 2024 ransomware class action settlement (San Diego Union-Tribune) —
  7. California Department of Public Health hospital licensure directory —
  8. American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet recognition list —
  9. California AB 1502 hospital ownership law (California Legislature) —
  10. Sharp HealthCare overview (San Diego market context) —
  11. UC San Diego Health overview —
  12. Indeed Best Places to Work in Healthcare 2023 list —
  13. Workday applicant experience documentation —
  14. Press Ganey patient experience methodology —
  15. Scripps Health Wikipedia article (background and history) —