So one of the clients I work with has to go to emergency today, we take him to what is considered one of the best hospital facilities in North America thinking that he would be looked at quickly. SEVEN fucking hours later he hasn’t even seen a doctor. The staff said it could be another five hour wait and besides this they were just plain rude. Without medical attention his crisis could have easily become life threatening but since he wasn’t at the point of death they didn’t make him a priority.
This man’s well being just happens to be MY priority and those rude fucks at the hospital just don’t see things from ours or his point of view.
All this being said I told the staff with him to just leave and I would take him to another hospital, this is the same hospital where my daughters were born, where I take all other emergencies, and where the staff are generally pleasant and efficient.
We got to the “little” hospital, we were checked in immediately, tests were run, and my clients crisis was remedied very simply in less than three hours. The staff at this little hospital rocks. They happen to care a great deal about who comes through their doors and you know it.
I’ve run into that before. I’ve even looked out in the ER parking lot and seen few cars and no ambulances were unloading, yet I got to wait an hour or so with a painful injury. When I got in, I found most of the bays empty, with just a few patients in there. I got to sit in the treatment room for another 30 minutes, watching nurses and staff yuck it up at the central desk. Then one accidentally wandered in, took my vitals and wandered out.
I couldn’t sit still because of the pain and 20 minutes later, Doc saunters in, examines me, orders a shot and pain killers. I sit 20 more minutes before a nurse sulks in, jabs me with a needle and gives me a prescription for pain that I get to go to the all night pharmacy several miles away to get filled. Like, they couldn’t give me a pill of the same stuff so I’d not have to suffer for another hour and a half.
Then they billed me $450!
With the rising cost of medical care, one would think the ER would be crowded with doctors and nurses just ready to grab a patient, like on TV, and take good care of him.
Feynn, I agree that the little hospital rocks. I’ve been there many times and they are great all the way around.
I have a ton of horror stories from that OTHER supposedly wonderful hospital here. The one that is closer to where we live. Having had both parents in there and also my son, I would literally rather die on the street than go back. my mom was terrified to die there thus I kept her home.
When boyo was 3 months he developed what I thought was bronchitis. I took him to emergency in the middle of the night and all of a sudden they decided he might have meningitis and wanted consent for a spinal tap. I said I wanted to call my husband to come and they were assholes. I said are you telling me my son is going to die if we wait for his father to get here. Asshole says, I’m telling you your son is going to die. I called hubby who left to come down.
While standing in the hall waiting, two young newbie docs flipped a coin in front of me as to which one was to do the spinal tap. Neither had done one prior to this.
When hubby got there, they delayed things to split us up and question us like we were criminals because boyo had what had originally started as a cold.
Finally the spinal tap was done, some 7 hours later and he had pneumonia.
Big bureaucracies and bullshit.
I think the Big guys should be taking lessons in empathy from the small guys… all this education and training and they sometimes forget that they treat people.
This is how I view my work; It’s not like I’m not an auto mechanic and can just leave a car in the shop overnight. My work is taking care of living, breathing, feeling people. There are those in my field that say we should not get attached to the people we work with… fuck em.
The thread the other day on how to treat the handicapped really pissed me off. Limited people?? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
As you can see I woke up still feeling pissed off and it’s likely to go on for a little while longer…
And let’s not even get on to the subject of military hospitals (at least when Dad is a non-com). I could fill this thread with horror stories, but I’ll restrict myself to a couple of the most egregious:
I’m seven years old with some mysterious fungus. Clever young doctor decides he doesn’t have to bother with checking things like my chart with lists of allergies, brushes off my mom’s questions, and gives me a whopping shot of penicillan, neatly killing me on the spot (for a few seconds, anyway. Alert tech revives me, doctor shrugs and wanders off.
Little brother (about three at the time) is playing in the driveway. Older brother opens the garage door suddenly from the inside, catching little bro under the chin & sending him through the air, landing several feet away on his head. Mom rushes unconcious child to hospital, where she sits and waits for over an hour. Eventually, little bro wakes up, screaming. After two hours of his screaming, nurse comes out and tells mom to take him home, he must be okay if he can scream like that. Little bro was never the same after that - all sorts of behavioral problems and physical twitches have plagued him.
Sister-in-law giving birth in military hospital. She is a tiny woman, the baby is large and her OB/Gyn ahs determined that a cesarian will be required. OB/Gyn not availble when she goes into labor. Resident OB decides she doesn’t need a cesarian after all, goes in with the forceps, and yanks out the baby, breaking both the baby’s collarbones. A few minutes later, brother (now in shock from the whole mess) is approached by an officer who tells him he has to sign this release stating that he agrees with the duty doctor’s decisions.
And the list could go on with military and county hospitals. Sheesh, and people wonder why I advocate alternative medical care. Anything that will keep me out of a hospital.
Our local hospital is pretty horrible in the billing dept too. They ROUTINELY charge you severeal times for the same thing, then think it’s your job to porve them wrong.
When my grandpa died, he was at home. Sudden, gone before he hit the floor. Paramedics come, obviously the man has been gone a while, but they are not medically qualified to say he’s dead unless he’s in several pieces, apparently.
So off to the hospital he goes, where they proceed to try and REVIVE him. Right, whatever. We told them not to, but they said they had to.
So a few weeks later, we get a bill for the “treatment” he received! We blew it off, and then they started harrassing my dad! We explained that these were unwanted, unauthorized treatments on a DEAD BODY, but they didn’t care. They even threatened to send my grandpa’s bill to collections! We said go for it, HE’S DEAD!
Needless to say they just didn’t get it. Idiots.
While I in no way want to defend the hospitals you guys are talikng about–you guys have ben to some doozies–I would like to defend emergency rooms in general. Keep in mind that the ERs I am attempting to defend are not-for-profit, public hospitals–the ones who handle indigent care patients along with patients who care any type of insurance. Private hospitals have zero sympathy from me so far as wait times go. They have no excuse.
I work in a public, not-for-profit hospital with the region’s only level-3 trauma center and neonatal intensive care area and I know much of what goes on. I know that there are ER nurses more concerned with who they picked up at a bar last weekend than they are about the gaping wound they are bandaging up. I know there are ER docs who feel theat you should just consider yourself blessed and damn lucky do even be graced with their presence. I know that it can take entirley too long to get test results back and that waiting for them is often worse than the affliction itself.
However, in my area, we often have people complaining about how long it takes to be treated in the ER. There was a letter to the editor in the paper about how this woman brought in her teenage daughter with stomach pain. After waiting in the waiting room (where there were “only two other patients”) and the exam room for a total of four hours (“and I didn’t hear a single ambulance siren so I know there weren’t any accidents or anything.”) she decided it had been too long and left. After all, “I had work the next day and my daughter had to go to school.”
There are several problems with this. First of all, I was working the night in question. We did, in fact, have several trauma victims brought in by both helicopter and ambulance. The reason she did not hear the sirens is because the drivers turn off the sirens when they turn into the medical complex at night to avoid waking all the patients in the hospital. The second, and most common, problem is that when she felt she had waited too long, she decided to take her daughter home. Now, if her daughter was well enough to go home because she had school the next day–she did not need to be in the emergency room in the first place!!
This happens very often. Part of the reason why it takes so long to be treated in the emergency room is people coming in for little things that could really be handled by a private physician. Another problem stems from insurance guidelines. In our area, individuals on state-sponsored health insurance are required by the terms of the insurance to be seen in the emergency room if help is needed and it isn’t a scheduled doctor’s appointment time or they can’t be squeezed in at their designated physician’s office. They cannot go to an urgent care facility (walk-in immediate care clinic)–it must be the emergency room. Therefore, if you come in with a semi-emergency, you may be behind some of these people. Why should you have to wait behind them? Well, consider the fact that while you have waited two to three hours to be treated, some of these people have been waiting 12-13 just to be seen–we have to fit them in somewhere.
Again, I am not excusing the hospital staff mentioned in this thread–those instances are clearly bad service and should be treated as such. However, everyone should try to remember that while it is the purpose of doctors to treat people, it is the main purpose of the emergency room to save people’s lives. If your life is not in immediate danger, you automatically become second priority.
And don’t assume just because you see empty beds in the ER that they are not busy. Many ERs have separate areas to treat trauma patients and they are not often visible to “regular” ER patrons. Also keep in mind that if your hospital treats those individuals on state assistance as mine does, you may be seen behind someone who has a bad cold or an infected splinter but I’ll wager a guess that that person has also been sitting in that waiting room/exam room about three or four times longer than you also.
I just want everyone to remember that medical service is not the same as food service. You cannot run an ER on a first-come-first-serve basis. I hope you never find out but if you are ever the one who must be rushed to the hospital and treated as first priority in front of people with broken bones, shortness of breath, or cuts requiring stitches, you will be grateful that the system is set up the way it is.
Rant over. Go back to complaining about hideous customer service now!
I was so happy to see 24 hour emergency clinics start to pop up. The one in my old hometown can handle all of the small day to day emergencies that often cause those delays at the large hospital trauma centers. Kid cuts his hand, take him there (Many ambulances already do, if the paramedics feel it is more suited to there.) and he will be seen quickly because the super serious cases aren’t there to pull people away. The place is strictly outpatient, anything more serious than a broken leg and they transfer to one of the local hospitals, but it does ease off the hospitals workloads.
I have worked in a hospital. They are very rarely busy in the ER unless there is a trauma. In this case everyone will know from the hustle going on around them. I do know for a fact though that the doctors and the nurses will sit there and do absolutely nothing knowing there are patients in the waiting room. I have actually seen a doctor play solitare on his laptop while a child was in the waiting room waiting for stitches from a dog bite. I have since left the medical profession and it is due partly in what I have witnessed going on in a place where they are suppose to put the concerns of the patient ahead of their own.
Yes, the rising medical costs are outragous and an ER nurse can make about $28.00an hour where I live and it is not a large city. You are right for that money you would think that they would want to take care of their patients.
Sue and I live in Canada where fees for medical service aren’t an issue, lack of service is the issue. I don’t want to take anything away from Hospital #1… they are the same guys who kept my nephew alive after a horrendous car accident a year ago. I am not ignorant of the workings of an ER and I understand that trauma cases take precedent.
Maybe I should be pissed at the people who come to the ER when they could just see their doctor or visit a walk in clinic instead. There is still no excuse for what happened yesterday and the behaviour of the staff was atrocious to say the very least.
Our health care system still works pretty well most of the time, in my experience this kind of thing has rarely happened to me. Where I am from people needing attention usually get it fairly quickly. It makes me shake my head and wonder as to what went wrong yesterday.
This post will be very long. Sorry about that.
Note: I am an American, but I’ve lived most of my life in the Detroit suburbs, a mere stone’s throw from Canada. I grew up watching the CBC. At the beginning of this
saga, I was not totally ignorant of Canadian healthcare policy and other such things.
When I was 14, my mother and I accompanied my uncle (mom’s brother) and grandfather (mom’s dad) to Cambridge, Ontario on a business trip. At the time, gramps was being treated for emphysema brought on by nearly 50 years of smoking. He had already had half of one of his lungs removed because of extreme damage. However, he had been doing very well and his doctors didn’t think there would be a problem with his traveling.
On the second night of our trip, it became extremely difficult for him to breathe. When it became clear that we had to find treatment lest he die in our hotel room, mom drove him to the emergency room. The admitting staff seemed reluctant to start dealing with an American patient, and urged my mother to take him back to the hotel and consult a private doctor in the morning. When she insisted–quite vociferously, I might add (go mom)–they finally consented to admit him.
The doctors originally told gramps that he would be in the hospital for 2 or 3 nights at the most. After a week in the ICU, they moved him to a regular room. Meanwhile, mom is trying to cope in a hotel room hours from home while she watches over her sick dad. While I do not fault the doctors for underestimating the length of his stay (hey, anyone can take a turn for the worse), this is the part I cannot believe to this day:
THE NUMBFUCK STAFF OF THE HOSPITAL BEGAN HARASSING HIM ABOUT HOW THEY WOULD BE PAID THE VERY NIGHT HE WAS ADMITTED. They said they hadn’t dealt with a non-Canadian patient lately, and they didn’t know where the money would be coming from, so he had better come up with something. This is a man who is very sick, who KNOWS that he is very sick, who is afraid, in pain, and fighting for his every breath. The sheer lack of professionalism involved here boggles the mind.
Mom explained to them, very patiently, that it was still okay for them to submit a claim to Blue Cross, because our primitive American health insurance still has provisions for people who get sick in Canada. Yes, they snapped, they were aware of that, but Blue Cross wouldn’t cover this treatment, so they wouldn’t submit claim. No way, no how.
Mom made some calls. It was true that Blue Cross wouldn’t cover the treatment, but gramps’s supplemental insurance would, no problem. She explained to the Canadian hospital people that if they sent the claim to Blue Cross, they would turn it down, but that the claim would then be bumped to the supplemental insurance. They would be paid, but they had to send the claim to Blue Cross first.
They refused. There was no way, they said, that they would submit a claim that was just going to be turned down. I can’t tell you how many times mom explained that the first company would turn it down, but the second company would pick it up automatically. That they would GET THEIR FUCKING MONEY IF THEY JUST LISTENED TO HER. Nope. Not gonna submit a claim that is going to be turned down as a matter of course.
Gramps is still in serious condition, and the doctors and nurses actually continue to badger him daily about how the hospital will be paid. Mom continues to explain how the problem can be solved. Hospital continues to refuse to listen to reason. This goes on for two weeks, until gramps is well enough to be moved to our home in Michigan.
For the rest of his life–about six months–gramps receives daily phone calls from the hospital collection agency demanding that he send them a check that very day. Terms like “deadbeat American” were pretty common at this point. He knows that he’s in the right, but he’s also from a generation that’s used to trusting authority. He begins to believe that he might be in the wrong, and this worry begins to show in his health. My entire family agrees that the rapid decline in his health that led to his death can be partially attributed to the harassment he received DAILY from this hospital.
The hospital never did submit the insurance claim to Blue Cross. Mom eventually had to go through unusual channels in gramps’s supplemental insurance to get the money herself. For some reason, the hospital demanded that she deliver the money in person in order to satisfy them. Gramps had not been dead a month before she was forced to go back to that hospital where the two of them had been through so much frustration and suffering together.
As a final insult, when mom presented the money and explained to the woman in charge of the account that she blamed their hospital–and this account manager in particular–for her father’s death, the woman had the gall to try to rehash the hospital’s original “Well, they’ll turn down the claim, so we can’t submit it” argument. No sympathy whatsoever. At this point, mom lost her cool once and for all. She spit on the woman’s desk, explained that she wasn’t going to argue with stupidity, and left that godforsaken hospital for good.
I’m sorry this was so long, but I can’t think of a quicker way to tell the story and still convey the outrage my family still feels. Gramps was a wonderful man; he was a WWII veteran, a great teacher, and the best dad/grandpa anyone could want. He didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. I guess my rant isn’t against Canadian healthcare in general, but in this Canadian hospital in particular. Socialized medicine might be a good idea, but this was socialized medicine that had been twisted into something evil.
Don’t get me started on the subject of military and VA hospitals. If it weren’t so hard to sue the government, many of these facilities would be aquaria for malpractice sharks.
My own exhibit A is http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=39081 The hospital where my son was born was Portsmouth Naval Hospital. My mother just reviewed the records, and found out the docs knew what they were looking at, and didn’t do a damn thing.
Exhibit B was my friend Lisa. She went in, had an IV started and almost lost the use of her dominant arm. IIRC, the IV fluid seeped into the tissue, plus she contracted an infection at the site. The Navy told her to stick it.
One of the lesson’s I’ve learned is that I don’t want to be treated at a teaching hospital. True, doctors need to learn, but after my experience at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, it ain’t gonna be me.
It is true that some hospitals are better than others. This small hospital that opened up behind my house is wonderful. I had a bad case of bronchitis last week. I went in, had top-notch treatment, and the ER doc offered to set an appointment with one of their internists for me.
Robin
As a former Air Force serviceman, I too have my tales of woe conserning military medical facilities…I think that the problem lies with the fact that military doctors cannot be sued for malpractice. If you compare the yearly income of a civilian doctor with that of a military doctor, you begin to wonder why anyone with medical training would chose to be a military doctor, until you consider the malpractice issue. If you are a less-than-great doctor, the cut in pay is worth not having to pay for malpractice insurance. So then the military attracts sub-par doctors.
Which explains why it took two days, three seperate doctors, two sets of x-rays, and three seperate blood tests for the Doctors at R.A.F. Lakenheath in the U.K. to determine that I had apendicitis. Fortunatly they got my apendix out before it burst, but not by much…
I once read an ad in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Navy offered free malpractice coverage, travel, training, forgiveness of some student debt, and the usual stuff they offer to everyone. I would think, then, that the military would appeal to those who weren’t able to get competitive internships and residencies. Maybe one of the docs on this board can confirm this.
I compared the pay scales for a pilot with 4 years of college to a doctor with 8+. Pilots make more, when you factor in such things as hazard and flight pay.
To be fair, though, I’ve received excellent care from independent duty corpsmen. (IDCs). These are physician’s assistants with several years of training and experience. One caught a rather nasty kidney infection that a MD had diagnosed as lumbar back strain. Another diagnosed and successfully treated a series of debilitating sinus headaches, and prescribed a combination of meds that actually worked. And I’ve never received anything less than outstanding dental care that included root canal, wisdom-tooth extraction, and some fillings.
Robin
It’s been a longtime dream of mine to become a doctor one day. I’m just a college freshman right now–but I’ve already been looking into pre-med programs.
I just want all of ya to know right now that I wouldn’t tolerate any injustices on -my- shift.
There’s no hospital classification for “Scared–confused, and worried.”. And there shouldn’t -need- to be. What people need more of is a doctor’s -care-. Not his signature–or his license.
If this is what I’m going to have to deal with if I become a physician…maybe I should become a veterinarian instead.
-Ashley
Walk-in urgent care centers were mentioned earlier, and I have nothing but good things to say about them.
In high school, I cut my hand badly when I put it through a window (didn’t mean to). My boyfriend took me to the local walk-in clinic, where the doctor was just getting ready to go home for the evening. Not only did they have to track down my grandparents (parents were away) to insure payment, but I needed 46 stitches in my hand, plus getting the glass out.
When my parents came home & heard where I was treated, they were afraid that I didn’t receive the same level of care as at a hospital.
Damn right I didn’t. I was seen immediately, and my scars healed beautifully. Only a couple are visible, and the nerve damage was not this guy’s fault, but due to the position of the cuts.
Kudos to that tired doc, who helped me instead of ducking out the back, as he absolutely could have done, making them call someone else & making me wait.
lucie
Member
Registered: Jul 2000
Posts: 268
And let’s not even get on to the subject of military hospitals (at least when Dad is a non-com). I could fill this thread with horror stories, but I’ll restrict myself to a couple of the most egregious:
I’ve been in and out of Military and VA hospitals since Viet Nam. In all fairness, some of them are excellent - got nothing but praise for White River Junction, VT, at least as it was in 1977. Others are production line mecicine at it’s worst. I’ve gone in for a 9:00 appointment and felt lucky to be seen by three. I’ve had a couple of mylograms right out of the Dark Ages.
Virtually all of the VA hospitals are teaching hospitals and I’ve had days when I’ve known what a lab rat feels like.
I don’t pay for health or emergency care and I always feel a little guilty and ungratful bitching about it. Some of the staff I’ve encountered went out of their ways to re-enforce that feeling, “Other people have to pay for this, you know…”
One day, when my meds get fucked up again…
I work at a VA hospital, and I tend to agree with you that being in a training hospital sucks. At the one I work at, it seems that interns and residents do things for their edification, rather than for the good of the patient. The nurses I work with are all wonderful, and for the most part, the salt of the earth.
What I want to say, however, is that you are the patient, and you have the right to demand care that meets your needs and standards. Don’t feel guilty about not paying for your care, because you already have. Don’t let the staff make you feel bad, either. It’s not their body or mind that’s being taken care of, it’s yours. Demand answers and ask questions. Take an active part in your care.
Too many patients I deal with take the attitude that “doctors know best”. In truth, they don’t. Research your condition, and if you disagree or don’t want a treatment or procedure, you have the right to refuse it, or to seek alternatives. This is what is known as “informed consent”.
This goes to every consumer of healthcare services in the US.
Robin