I would give this hospital a zero if I could. My husband was there initially for acute renal failure. About 7 days after he went in he was on no food or water and the nurse told me that they were going to do something with him but couldn't tell me until the doc spoke with me. An hour later the hospitalist told me they were releasing him that afternoon. The nurse then told me they were not. A GI surgeon came in and said they were removing his gallbladder the next morning. The hospitalist came in again an hour later about the release and I had to inform him that they were removing his gallbladder. That surgeon was brilliant and all went well.
Three weeks later, two hours after he was released from rehab, he was brought in by ambulance for passing out, dehydration, and severe low blood pressure. That, and he hadn't eaten anything for several weeks. He was in for six days when one of many docs came in, a different doc each day it seemed, and said that he was dehydrated and they would keep him on fluids for a few days. I asked how long he needed to be on fluids to become rehydrated and he actually yelled at me, saying he had no idea how much volume he lost and it takes a few days to rehydrate. The nurse then said he had been on fluids for 6 days. He stopped and said oh, I didn't know that. My first reaction was to ask what the hell he was doing diagnosing my husband if he wasn't even aware he had been in the hospital for a week. How incredibly unprofessional. Then, to top it off, one of the nurses who said she had 20 years experience as a cardiac nurse actually yelled at him, telling him it was unfair of him to put me and his family through this, that it was all in his head, and he was driving the doctors and staff crazy trying to figure out why he wasn't eating when all he had to do was stop acting like that and eat something. She even went so far as to involve the staff psychologist without my permission. I told them I never wanted to see that nurse in his room again. They finally diagnosed him with autonomic neuropathy, a part of which affects his digestion and ability to eat. Some of the nurses and doctors and especially the techs, were amazing. The GI team was exceptional, the ER was terrific, and even the first doctor who didn't know how long he had been treated turned out to be okay. All in all, however, I would never recommend this hospital to anyone but the most desperate, based on their lack of communication, experience, and professionalism. Being there with him for over four weeks was a nightmare and I should have moved him right away.
