Problems with a hospital?

[RCB]

Here is a link to the agency that accredits hospitals:

http://www.jcaho.org/


There is a 800 # and email address. Best to give a detailed written email
with events and names of people who were responsible and any reaction
to your compliants to an incident, so they can check to see if it was properly
recorded at the hospital.

Armed with a detailed compliant, these people can give a hospital staff and admin. a good proctoring! Kind of like(I am sooo BAD) " a taste of their own medicine!"

 

[Ross]

Oh man, don't tempt me right now. This hospital is all over me about payment for Lyns surgery and all I can think of is the staph infection I got from an IV line that nearly killed me while I was there and said nothing about it. Of course, had I died, Lyn could have easily won a lawsuit, but since I survived......well you know the story.

The other thing that comes to mind is Medicare fraud. Why on earth is the HMO paying a rental fee for an Oxygen Concentrator for 3 years when it could have been outright purchased in 1?

 

[Nancy]

RCB--

Is proctoring sort of related to proctology??

 

[RCB]

Of Course, Nancy

Of Course, Nancy

RCB--

Is proctoring sort of related to proctology??

"Proctoring" is what a Protologist practices. ( Ross please insert your gloved-handed Protologist here )


Nancy, I was discussing you and Joe's recent "experience", with a hospital admin. friend and he suggested this action as "letting loose the dogs of war".
Tell Joe I'm thinking of him!

 

[Nancy]

I have already started with the hospital's internal review staff. I had a persomal meeting and I have written a strong letter relating all of the horrible things that have happened, and have copied some high level officials within the hospital.

In the mean time, we have had several telemarketing calls from the hospital asking me to answer a friendly survey about the hospital, also got a questionaire in the mail regarding our opinion. They say that our opinion "counts". Well, I copied my letter and told them this was our opinion, and hung up on the telemarketing

If we do not find out that things are going to improve, then I may follow your route. We also have the State Dept. of Health here, and they like to know these things too. They want you to go through the internal review procedure first.

Joe thinks this is useless, and will probably be all whitewashed. He worked as a manager for an extremely large company, and said that complaints came in all the time, and that they were all whitewashed, and basically business went on as before, with no changes.

The most unfortunate thing is that the doctors' care was first rate, and has been for many years. We don't want to have to change cards. since they know how to handle Joe's situation, and the doctors are tied to the hospital.

I think there will be some changes though, since several doctors also were very unhappy with the care on the unit where Joe was. And we weren't the only people who were complaining.

I was on the phone with Joe one evening, and I could hear a patient n the hallway, screaming that she needed help, she wanted to go home, that she could get better care there. It was frightful. There were very ill people on that unit.

So thanks for the link. It will probably be used.

 

[Cris N]

Joe thinks this is useless, and will probably be all whitewashed. He worked as a manager for an extremely large company, and said that complaints came in all the time, and that they were all whitewashed, and basically business went on as before, with no changes.

Nancy,
I commend you for continuing to alert people about the care that Joe received. You seem to be a voice that someone in authority should listen to - you've seen much more than the 'average' patient/sig. other.

I would like to take issue with Joe's thought, however. If the various agencies & administrators keep hearing the same complaints, sooner or later they're going to get the message that something needs to be fixed.

Best of luck.

Cris