Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Good experience; no problems with pain management
I had surgery for uterine cancer a few months ago at Henry Mayo, and I have absolutely no complaints about the care I received. I had no problems with pain management; the nursing staff responded very quickly to my calls. Problems can occur at any hospital: Cedars-Sinai, UCLA Medical Center, St. Joseph’s Hospital are all well-regarded, and yet all have had their share of bad publicity for alleged medical errors and poor patient care. I am sorry your experience at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital was a traumatic one for you and your family. In my personal experience, with my own medical care and with that of other members of my family, Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital rates very highly in professionalism, compassion, and patient care.
The hospital could not handle premature birth
(From Larry) My grandfather was in there after a bout with pneumonia. He was also suffering from dementia.
He ended up being placed in transitional care at the hospital. I was horrified when I went by to see him and he was feeding himself. While this is not a problem for most people, he could barely lift his hands. He had food all over himself. I talked to the nursing supervisor about this and was told they were short staffed and would do their best.
The next day, the same thing happened. We ended up having to hire our own nurse to go over there to feed him.
When he left, he was bed-ridden since the pneumonia had left him so weak. We found he was covered in bed sores and had raw areas on his skin. It was so bad that we documented it and my grandmother filed complaints with the state.
My sons were also born here. One of them was premature. The hospital could not handle this. They had to bring in specialists from Northridge Hospital for the delivery and transport. These guys knew their stuff and saved my sons life.
Unless I am dying, I drive to Holy Cross.
My grandfather was in there after a bout with pneumonia. He was also suffering from dementia.
He ended up being placed in transitional care at the hospital. I was horrified when I went by to see him and he was feeding himself. While this is not a problem for most people, he could barely lift his hands. He had food all over himself. I talked to the nursing supervisor about this and was told they were short staffed and would do their best.
The next day, the same thing happened. We ended up having to hire our own nurse to go over there to feed him.
When he left, he was bed-ridden since the pneumonia had left him so weak. We found he was covered in bed sores and had raw areas on his skin. It was so bad that we documented it and my grandmother filed complaints with the state.
My sons were also born here. One of them was premature. The hospital could not handle this. They had to bring in specialists from Northridge Hospital for the delivery and transport. These guys knew their stuff and saved my sons life.
Unless I am dying, I drive to Holy Cross.
He ended up being placed in transitional care at the hospital. I was horrified when I went by to see him and he was feeding himself. While this is not a problem for most people, he could barely lift his hands. He had food all over himself. I talked to the nursing supervisor about this and was told they were short staffed and would do their best.
The next day, the same thing happened. We ended up having to hire our own nurse to go over there to feed him.
When he left, he was bed-ridden since the pneumonia had left him so weak. We found he was covered in bed sores and had raw areas on his skin. It was so bad that we documented it and my grandmother filed complaints with the state.
My sons were also born here. One of them was premature. The hospital could not handle this. They had to bring in specialists from Northridge Hospital for the delivery and transport. These guys knew their stuff and saved my sons life.
Unless I am dying, I drive to Holy Cross.
My grandfather was in there after a bout with pneumonia. He was also suffering from dementia.
He ended up being placed in transitional care at the hospital. I was horrified when I went by to see him and he was feeding himself. While this is not a problem for most people, he could barely lift his hands. He had food all over himself. I talked to the nursing supervisor about this and was told they were short staffed and would do their best.
The next day, the same thing happened. We ended up having to hire our own nurse to go over there to feed him.
When he left, he was bed-ridden since the pneumonia had left him so weak. We found he was covered in bed sores and had raw areas on his skin. It was so bad that we documented it and my grandmother filed complaints with the state.
My sons were also born here. One of them was premature. The hospital could not handle this. They had to bring in specialists from Northridge Hospital for the delivery and transport. These guys knew their stuff and saved my sons life.
Unless I am dying, I drive to Holy Cross.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
AWESOME OR AWFUL HOSPITAL??
Hello, I am a long time resident of the SCV. I have enjoyed the new advertising campaign for Valencia….AWESOMETOWN. The advertisers are correct that the SCV is AWESOME. The sad thing is that the local Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital is the furthest possible from AWESOME. We need an awesome hospital not a hospital that patients are afraid to go to for care. As an example of how bad the care is, my daughter was born there last month and there was an emergency caused by the nurses that almost killed my daughter. The baby had to be transferred to another hospital. The therapist lost a tube in my daughter’s lung. The other hospital had to go in and remove the tube lost in my daughter’s lung. Henry Mayo is really an….AWFULHOSPITAL!!!! I am sure if you can go to another hospital you will be better treated. Why doesn’t the administrator respond to my daughter’s complication? No call has been made to me to ask how the baby is or even apologize!!!! I think I will in the future call the hospital “AWFULHOSPITAL” or Henry Hold the Mayo. I invite SCV citizens to click the link to a Rant and Rave about the local hospital. Maybe there are patients that are happy with the care and they should respond. The local newspaper has more letters to the editor that are highlighting the bad care than those highlighting good care. Please respond and let’s get this hospital’s problems aired out. I am hoping the hospital will respond to each and every one of the replies to this website. Let’s hope we can change the “AWFULHOSPITAL” to an “AWESOMEHOSPTAL.”
Henry Mayo Part 1: The ER, stock up on “Ammo and Water!”
This is a reprint of an October, 2008, commentary from the West Ranch Beacon news site. I have written about the hospital issue a few times before but now it is different having spent the better part of three days there with my wife Nancy. On Friday she fell down the last three steps of the stairs in our house and got a compound fracture of her lower left leg. A compound fracture is when the bone breaks and is sticking through the skin.
Fortunately, I had taken the day off from work and was at home. I was downstairs and my wife was coming down from the upstairs of the house having just retrieved a piece of paper that she was reading when she slipped. I heard her yell out as she crashed to the floor, and when I came around to the stairway she was on the floor and her left foot was oriented about 90 % from where it normally should have been. It was ugly!
I called 911 right away and the paramedics from Station 124 were at the house within 5 or 6 minutes as was an ambulance that followed a few minutes later. The paramedics were fantastic, and they put a splint on Nancy’s leg and foot to stabilize it and gave her some much needed pain relief as she was starting to go into shock. Several firefighters got her easily onto a stretcher and into the ambulance for the ride to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. I followed suit in my own car on their recommendation.
We could not have been happier with the response and the professionalism of the paramedics and firefighters from Los Angeles County Fire Station 124. Our community is lucky to have that station and equally lucky to have such wonderful firefighter personal staffing it in our community.
The ambulance took off from the house and I followed as long as I could but finally lost them at a red light that I had to stop at by the The Old Road and Stevenson Ranch Parkway. By the time I got to the hospital Nancy was already in the Emergency Room (ER) getting care.
I have not been to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in quite a while except for a tour that Roger E. Seaver, the President and CEO of the facility, gave me last year.
Both of my children were born at a hospital in Tarzana by choice even though we have lived in SCV for decades. We have avoided Henry Mayo whenever possible because of the bad reputation, real or imagined that the hospital has had over the years. Let’s face we have all heard stories or comments that the place is a “butcher shop” or a “sh@# hole”. Certainly Mr. Seaver has been doing an admirable job of trying to turn that perception around.
But nonetheless, we have made it a point to seek our medical care down in the valley south of Santa Clarita. Due to the serious nature of my wife’s injury we had to go to the Henry Mayo ER for immediate care. Believe me, if it was a simple broken bone I would have driven her down to St. Joseph’s or Tarzana in a heartbeat.
Now, I have to tell you that when I pulled around to the ER entrance there was little to no parking in that area. But I finally found a parking space not too far away and made my way over to an entrance which I quickly realized was under construction. I was directed to another entrance further away from the ambulance entrance. It was the waiting room and a hospital employee was in there and reluctantly opened a security door to let me through to the ER. By the way, he never asked for ID or a name, just let me through.
I will tell you upfront that the hospital personal that we encountered for the most part were great. The ER nurses and doctors that tended to my wife were fantastic in every sense of the word. They were professional, knowledgeable and did not hesitate to answer all of our questions.
There were some other hospital employees that wondered over to see my wife’s broken leg because it was “grotesque”, “it’s not Halloween yet”, “yikes, that’s nasty”, and so on. One orderly even took a photo with his cell phone camera because he likes to “collect” such pictures. That was downright unprofessional and weird!
The ER was clearly not big enough to handle a community the size of SCV. Add to that people using the ER for primary care and you quickly see a large problem. There was a woman in the bed next to my wife who was there because she had a headache/wasn’t feeling well and she arrived by ambulance. An ambulance!! She decided to leave on her own while we were still there.
If the ER was a microcosm of health care in the US we are doomed! This was reinforced by one of the ER nurses who said if there ever was a catastrophe in Santa Clarita we would all be screwed. She leaned over and said to both us, in a hushed whisper; “that we should make sure we are stocked up with plenty of “ammo and water”. (Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!!)
Have you ever seen a ball of rubber bands? That is what I equate Henry Mayo Hospital to because it was a small community hospital that has been adding on space for years in order to try and stay up with the growth of the area.
There are two things wrong with this; 1) the hospital always appears to be behind the growth curve and playing catch up and 2) there is no real plan for what the community actually needs to sustain itself in the future. In other words, we have a hodge-podge of a hospital complex and a current plan to add more buildings and office space just like adding more rubber bands to the ball.
The current hospital complex is just not big enough to handle the current and expected population growth of the Santa Clarita Valley. This is why I felt like a gerbil running through a maze of tubes in a Habi-trail to get to where my wife was in the emergency room from the waiting room area.
What we need is a regional hospital that is on a larger piece of property more centrally or conveniently located in the Santa Clarita Valley. Now that may not jive with the current hospital owners or the hospital developer or City Council members that have received financial support form any of those participants, but that is what our community needs.
And everyone can sit around fighting and frittering away time to add a few more office buildings to an already to small, poorly located community hospital or we can be bold and come up with a vision of what our Valley really needs now and in the future. Instead of saying “we can’t” because of this or that, how about we start asking “how can we” and start down the road of actually accomplishing something for the good of all the residents that call the Santa Clarita Valley home.
Stay tuned for part II of our experience at the local “small community hospital” including the lack of security.
Dave Bossert- Commentary
Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
Fortunately, I had taken the day off from work and was at home. I was downstairs and my wife was coming down from the upstairs of the house having just retrieved a piece of paper that she was reading when she slipped. I heard her yell out as she crashed to the floor, and when I came around to the stairway she was on the floor and her left foot was oriented about 90 % from where it normally should have been. It was ugly!
I called 911 right away and the paramedics from Station 124 were at the house within 5 or 6 minutes as was an ambulance that followed a few minutes later. The paramedics were fantastic, and they put a splint on Nancy’s leg and foot to stabilize it and gave her some much needed pain relief as she was starting to go into shock. Several firefighters got her easily onto a stretcher and into the ambulance for the ride to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. I followed suit in my own car on their recommendation.
We could not have been happier with the response and the professionalism of the paramedics and firefighters from Los Angeles County Fire Station 124. Our community is lucky to have that station and equally lucky to have such wonderful firefighter personal staffing it in our community.
The ambulance took off from the house and I followed as long as I could but finally lost them at a red light that I had to stop at by the The Old Road and Stevenson Ranch Parkway. By the time I got to the hospital Nancy was already in the Emergency Room (ER) getting care.
I have not been to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in quite a while except for a tour that Roger E. Seaver, the President and CEO of the facility, gave me last year.
Both of my children were born at a hospital in Tarzana by choice even though we have lived in SCV for decades. We have avoided Henry Mayo whenever possible because of the bad reputation, real or imagined that the hospital has had over the years. Let’s face we have all heard stories or comments that the place is a “butcher shop” or a “sh@# hole”. Certainly Mr. Seaver has been doing an admirable job of trying to turn that perception around.
But nonetheless, we have made it a point to seek our medical care down in the valley south of Santa Clarita. Due to the serious nature of my wife’s injury we had to go to the Henry Mayo ER for immediate care. Believe me, if it was a simple broken bone I would have driven her down to St. Joseph’s or Tarzana in a heartbeat.
Now, I have to tell you that when I pulled around to the ER entrance there was little to no parking in that area. But I finally found a parking space not too far away and made my way over to an entrance which I quickly realized was under construction. I was directed to another entrance further away from the ambulance entrance. It was the waiting room and a hospital employee was in there and reluctantly opened a security door to let me through to the ER. By the way, he never asked for ID or a name, just let me through.
I will tell you upfront that the hospital personal that we encountered for the most part were great. The ER nurses and doctors that tended to my wife were fantastic in every sense of the word. They were professional, knowledgeable and did not hesitate to answer all of our questions.
There were some other hospital employees that wondered over to see my wife’s broken leg because it was “grotesque”, “it’s not Halloween yet”, “yikes, that’s nasty”, and so on. One orderly even took a photo with his cell phone camera because he likes to “collect” such pictures. That was downright unprofessional and weird!
The ER was clearly not big enough to handle a community the size of SCV. Add to that people using the ER for primary care and you quickly see a large problem. There was a woman in the bed next to my wife who was there because she had a headache/wasn’t feeling well and she arrived by ambulance. An ambulance!! She decided to leave on her own while we were still there.
If the ER was a microcosm of health care in the US we are doomed! This was reinforced by one of the ER nurses who said if there ever was a catastrophe in Santa Clarita we would all be screwed. She leaned over and said to both us, in a hushed whisper; “that we should make sure we are stocked up with plenty of “ammo and water”. (Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!!)
Have you ever seen a ball of rubber bands? That is what I equate Henry Mayo Hospital to because it was a small community hospital that has been adding on space for years in order to try and stay up with the growth of the area.
There are two things wrong with this; 1) the hospital always appears to be behind the growth curve and playing catch up and 2) there is no real plan for what the community actually needs to sustain itself in the future. In other words, we have a hodge-podge of a hospital complex and a current plan to add more buildings and office space just like adding more rubber bands to the ball.
The current hospital complex is just not big enough to handle the current and expected population growth of the Santa Clarita Valley. This is why I felt like a gerbil running through a maze of tubes in a Habi-trail to get to where my wife was in the emergency room from the waiting room area.
What we need is a regional hospital that is on a larger piece of property more centrally or conveniently located in the Santa Clarita Valley. Now that may not jive with the current hospital owners or the hospital developer or City Council members that have received financial support form any of those participants, but that is what our community needs.
And everyone can sit around fighting and frittering away time to add a few more office buildings to an already to small, poorly located community hospital or we can be bold and come up with a vision of what our Valley really needs now and in the future. Instead of saying “we can’t” because of this or that, how about we start asking “how can we” and start down the road of actually accomplishing something for the good of all the residents that call the Santa Clarita Valley home.
Stay tuned for part II of our experience at the local “small community hospital” including the lack of security.
Dave Bossert- Commentary
Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
Henry Mayo Part II: Surgery at a “Small Community Hospital”
This was originally published in November, 2008 as part of a four commentary series chronicling my and my wife’s experiences at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. It is an accurate account of a four day stay at the hospital which started in the emergency room, nearly five hours of surgery and then 3 days recovery in a hospital room. This part two in a series of commentaries, the number of commentaries is yet to be determined, on our experiences with Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. Part I was titled “The ER: Ammo and Water!” which covered the accident, paramedics, and emergency room treatment.
After my wife, Nancy, received immediate care for her injury, which included twisting her foot back into place in the emergency room (ER), we waited a while until a room was assigned to her. During that wait there was an influx of Sheriff Deputies into the ER with at least three prisoners from the local jail. Yes, it was a rough and tumble crowd!
What I don’t understand is why they just don’t have a permanent ER at the jail. Doesn’t it make more sense to treat most jailhouse injuries at the jail? The inmates that came into the Henry Mayo ER didn’t look all that bad. I would think cuts, bruises, etc. could be handled at the jail; you know, throw an old x-ray machine in a room, some lab equipment, a Swingline stapler, some band-aids and sewing thread and you’re pretty much set up. Right!?
Fortunately Nancy got a room shortly after the inmates arrived and we left the ER rather quickly. Once again we traversed the rat’s maze of corridors to an elevated that initially didn’t want to work once we got in and the doors closed. After a few tries of the buttons and opening the doors a couple of times it finally decided to work and take us up to the second floor.
We exited the elevated and proceeded down a long hallway to basically an elevated, enclosed hallway that connected what is the main hospital to a newer, add on pavilion. I’m thinking the architect was a guy named Rube Goldberg! Again, this gets back to my assertion that the hospital is just a ball of rubber bands with a hodge-podge of add on buildings.
The room was just inside the pavilion at the end of the, no doubt expensive, elevated hallway. We waited in the room for a couple of hours until it was time to go to pre-op. My sister brought our two daughters so they could visit with their mother before the surgery.
At about 6:15 PM on Friday, several orderlies showed up to take Nancy to the pre-op area just outside the surgical suits on the second floor on the opposite side of the pricey, yet stark elevated hallway. They put us in a small private room.
Here is the shocking thing. Someone we have known, not a family member, wondered into the post-op area with out anyone stopping them. Let’s forget for a moment that it is more or less inappropriate, inconsiderate, rude, and rather brazen for this person to invade our privacy, especially since my wife was drugged up on morphine and other medications. Somebody just freely walked in off the street and into the pre-op area! That’s just not right and is one example of the lax security at Henry Mayo.
Add to this the fact that I asked an employee the next day to use his security card to open a doorway to a stairwell and you have the makings of an eventual bad situation. That’s right; I was to lazy to walk all the way around to the proper entrance and this employee just happened to be walking by at the right moment. Never asked who I was or if I had ID; how hard would it have been to say no you have to go around to the entrance. Instead he swiped his security card to unlock a door to a stairwell.
If you go to other hospitals, for instance Tarzana, you have to check in and get a visitors badge. They don’t allow anybody to enter their facility and roam around. Is Henry Mayo that bad off that they can’t have some semblance of a security process or is the hodge-podge of buildings just that porous, with so many ways in and out, to cover effectively?
I don’t know; all I know is that it was effortless to breeze in and out of Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. Let’s just pray that some thug doesn’t wonder in off the street and starts robbing people or worse.
But hey, the phrase that we kept hearing from various care givers is that we were at a “small community hospital”. Again, I have nothing but praise for the Doctors, Nurses and caregivers we encountered but we do not live in a small community like it was 25 or so years ago.
We live in a growing suburban community on the fringes of a major metropolitan area and we all deserve to have a medical center that can fully serve our community; one where the skilled caregivers at Henry Mayo can fully utilize their talents with a modern up-to-date facility. It needs to be a medical facility that can handle the current and future population of SCV in an effective, efficient manner.
Part 3 will detail some interesting issues at Henry Mayo ranging from pain management problems to faulty communication.
Dave Bossert- Commentary
Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
After my wife, Nancy, received immediate care for her injury, which included twisting her foot back into place in the emergency room (ER), we waited a while until a room was assigned to her. During that wait there was an influx of Sheriff Deputies into the ER with at least three prisoners from the local jail. Yes, it was a rough and tumble crowd!
What I don’t understand is why they just don’t have a permanent ER at the jail. Doesn’t it make more sense to treat most jailhouse injuries at the jail? The inmates that came into the Henry Mayo ER didn’t look all that bad. I would think cuts, bruises, etc. could be handled at the jail; you know, throw an old x-ray machine in a room, some lab equipment, a Swingline stapler, some band-aids and sewing thread and you’re pretty much set up. Right!?
Fortunately Nancy got a room shortly after the inmates arrived and we left the ER rather quickly. Once again we traversed the rat’s maze of corridors to an elevated that initially didn’t want to work once we got in and the doors closed. After a few tries of the buttons and opening the doors a couple of times it finally decided to work and take us up to the second floor.
We exited the elevated and proceeded down a long hallway to basically an elevated, enclosed hallway that connected what is the main hospital to a newer, add on pavilion. I’m thinking the architect was a guy named Rube Goldberg! Again, this gets back to my assertion that the hospital is just a ball of rubber bands with a hodge-podge of add on buildings.
The room was just inside the pavilion at the end of the, no doubt expensive, elevated hallway. We waited in the room for a couple of hours until it was time to go to pre-op. My sister brought our two daughters so they could visit with their mother before the surgery.
At about 6:15 PM on Friday, several orderlies showed up to take Nancy to the pre-op area just outside the surgical suits on the second floor on the opposite side of the pricey, yet stark elevated hallway. They put us in a small private room.
Here is the shocking thing. Someone we have known, not a family member, wondered into the post-op area with out anyone stopping them. Let’s forget for a moment that it is more or less inappropriate, inconsiderate, rude, and rather brazen for this person to invade our privacy, especially since my wife was drugged up on morphine and other medications. Somebody just freely walked in off the street and into the pre-op area! That’s just not right and is one example of the lax security at Henry Mayo.
Add to this the fact that I asked an employee the next day to use his security card to open a doorway to a stairwell and you have the makings of an eventual bad situation. That’s right; I was to lazy to walk all the way around to the proper entrance and this employee just happened to be walking by at the right moment. Never asked who I was or if I had ID; how hard would it have been to say no you have to go around to the entrance. Instead he swiped his security card to unlock a door to a stairwell.
If you go to other hospitals, for instance Tarzana, you have to check in and get a visitors badge. They don’t allow anybody to enter their facility and roam around. Is Henry Mayo that bad off that they can’t have some semblance of a security process or is the hodge-podge of buildings just that porous, with so many ways in and out, to cover effectively?
I don’t know; all I know is that it was effortless to breeze in and out of Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. Let’s just pray that some thug doesn’t wonder in off the street and starts robbing people or worse.
But hey, the phrase that we kept hearing from various care givers is that we were at a “small community hospital”. Again, I have nothing but praise for the Doctors, Nurses and caregivers we encountered but we do not live in a small community like it was 25 or so years ago.
We live in a growing suburban community on the fringes of a major metropolitan area and we all deserve to have a medical center that can fully serve our community; one where the skilled caregivers at Henry Mayo can fully utilize their talents with a modern up-to-date facility. It needs to be a medical facility that can handle the current and future population of SCV in an effective, efficient manner.
Part 3 will detail some interesting issues at Henry Mayo ranging from pain management problems to faulty communication.
Dave Bossert- Commentary
Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
Henry Mayo Part III: Floor polishing and Equipment Malfunctions causes Unnecessary Pain
This was originally published in November, 2008 as part of a four commentary series chronicling my and my wife’s experiences at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. It is an accurate account of a four day stay at the hospital which started in the emergency room, nearly five hours of surgery and then 3 days recovery in a hospital room. This is part three in a series of commentaries detailing the deficiencies we experienced at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital and why our community desperately needs a regional medical center. Part one titled “The ER: Ammo and Water!” covered the emergency room and part two titled “Surgery at a Small Community Hospital” discussed security issues we encountered. In this piece I want to showcase some facility problems that we experienced.
It was about midnight after Nancy spent nearly six hours between pre-op, surgery and post-op. The post-op nurses decided she was ready to be moved back to her room so they started to wheel her gurney out of post-op and into the hospital side of that long, expensive, elevated hallway. But we quickly realized that we could not get Nancy back to her room.
You see, the genius custodial engineers decided to “wax” that hallway all at once. Yes, the entire hallway was blocked off with a web of yellow caution tape affixed to the walls on either side. Not only that, but there was wet wax all over the hallway. This was the only way, aside from going outside the building, to get from the main hospital into the pavilion where Nancy’s room was.
Leaving the building into the dark of night with a freshly minted surgical patient was not an option. We were forced to go back into a pre-op room and wait while the nurse yelled at the maintenance supervisor on duty that night.
Now, I don’t have a PHD in custodial sciences but I’m pretty sure that I would have opted to wax one side of the hallway at a time allowing passage between the two buildings during the entire floor polishing process. But then again the architect (Rube Goldberg) should have had the foresight to add an alternate connection between the two buildings.
After waiting more than 30 minutes or so for the custodial “scientists” to clean up the wet wax and remove the tape blocking the hallway we were able to get my wife into her room for the night. I did not get out of the hospital until well after one in the morning. By the way, no security at all at the pavilion entrance which was completely unlocked; it appeared as though anyone could have walked in or out unabated.
I was back at the hospital to see Nancy on Saturday morning after getting about five hours sleep. She was still on a heavy amount of medication and was very groggy. I spent several hours with her as she slipped in and out of sleep and then went home for a couple hours.
When I returned Nancy was in quite a bit of pain and I asked the nurse to get her more pain medication. The one thing that is extremely important is pain management in these situations. There is no reason why someone should be in pain in the hospital. Unfortunately Nancy was allowed to be in pain longer than necessary because the narcotics cabinet was “malfunctioning”.
Because certain drugs are strictly controlled they are apparently dispensed from a cabinet controlled through a computer terminal attached to it. The nurse would log on with a password and ID to get the particular drug and needs to have another nurse sign on as a witness; the dose is then dispensed.
I don’t know all the details of the “malfunction” but I can tell you that Nancy was in a lot of pain and that didn’t make me happy at all. She had pressed the nurse call button several times and no one answered but she did hear other people yelling at the nurses for medications for their loved ones. She was not the only one not getting her medication in a timely fashion. The nurses were apologetic and were doing the best they could with the equipment at hand.
Does this sound like the kind of hospital our community should have? As I have said in the previous postings, we need a large modern regional hospital that has a sufficient number of beds to serve the population of the Santa Clarita Valley. Not the band-aid approach that is being proposed by the current hospital management which is adding more office space than beds.
Part 4 will deal with our final day in the hospital which was hell!
Dave Bossert- Commentary
Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
It was about midnight after Nancy spent nearly six hours between pre-op, surgery and post-op. The post-op nurses decided she was ready to be moved back to her room so they started to wheel her gurney out of post-op and into the hospital side of that long, expensive, elevated hallway. But we quickly realized that we could not get Nancy back to her room.
You see, the genius custodial engineers decided to “wax” that hallway all at once. Yes, the entire hallway was blocked off with a web of yellow caution tape affixed to the walls on either side. Not only that, but there was wet wax all over the hallway. This was the only way, aside from going outside the building, to get from the main hospital into the pavilion where Nancy’s room was.
Leaving the building into the dark of night with a freshly minted surgical patient was not an option. We were forced to go back into a pre-op room and wait while the nurse yelled at the maintenance supervisor on duty that night.
Now, I don’t have a PHD in custodial sciences but I’m pretty sure that I would have opted to wax one side of the hallway at a time allowing passage between the two buildings during the entire floor polishing process. But then again the architect (Rube Goldberg) should have had the foresight to add an alternate connection between the two buildings.
After waiting more than 30 minutes or so for the custodial “scientists” to clean up the wet wax and remove the tape blocking the hallway we were able to get my wife into her room for the night. I did not get out of the hospital until well after one in the morning. By the way, no security at all at the pavilion entrance which was completely unlocked; it appeared as though anyone could have walked in or out unabated.
I was back at the hospital to see Nancy on Saturday morning after getting about five hours sleep. She was still on a heavy amount of medication and was very groggy. I spent several hours with her as she slipped in and out of sleep and then went home for a couple hours.
When I returned Nancy was in quite a bit of pain and I asked the nurse to get her more pain medication. The one thing that is extremely important is pain management in these situations. There is no reason why someone should be in pain in the hospital. Unfortunately Nancy was allowed to be in pain longer than necessary because the narcotics cabinet was “malfunctioning”.
Because certain drugs are strictly controlled they are apparently dispensed from a cabinet controlled through a computer terminal attached to it. The nurse would log on with a password and ID to get the particular drug and needs to have another nurse sign on as a witness; the dose is then dispensed.
I don’t know all the details of the “malfunction” but I can tell you that Nancy was in a lot of pain and that didn’t make me happy at all. She had pressed the nurse call button several times and no one answered but she did hear other people yelling at the nurses for medications for their loved ones. She was not the only one not getting her medication in a timely fashion. The nurses were apologetic and were doing the best they could with the equipment at hand.
Does this sound like the kind of hospital our community should have? As I have said in the previous postings, we need a large modern regional hospital that has a sufficient number of beds to serve the population of the Santa Clarita Valley. Not the band-aid approach that is being proposed by the current hospital management which is adding more office space than beds.
Part 4 will deal with our final day in the hospital which was hell!
Dave Bossert- Commentary
Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
Henry Mayo Part IV: The day from hell with a crawly bug or two!
This was originally published in November, 2008 as part of a four commentary series chronicling my and my wife’s experiences at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. It is an accurate account of a four day stay at the hospital which started in the emergency room, nearly five hours of surgery and then 3 days recovery in a hospital room. This is part four in a series of commentaries detailing the deficiencies we experienced at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital and why our community desperately needs a regional medical center. Part one titled “The ER: Ammo and Water!” covered the emergency room, part two titled “Surgery at a Small Community Hospital” discussed security issues we encountered and part three titled “Floor polishing and Equipment Malfunctions causes Unnecessary Pain” dealt with some craziness with hospital maintenance and my wife not getting her pain medication in a timely fashion. In this piece I will discuss our final day at the hospital and the hell we went through.
If this is the first part that you are reading please take time to read the others first so that you have a fuller understanding of our experiences recently at Henry Mayo. As I have written a number of times, the Doctors, Nurses and Caregivers at the hospital were terrific for the most part. But the real issue is that the facility itself is less than half the size it should be to serve the Santa Clarita Valley communities.
My wife’s final day in Henry Mayo started off early with me coming over for a visit around 8:30 AM or so. The attending physician had just left after checking on Nancy. He was concerned that her blood count was down and wanted her to see a hematologist before he would discharge her from the hospital.
He apparently had put the order in for the hematologist right after his visit and we were just waiting for that doctor to show up. I subscribe to the notion of a four hour window of time being more than reasonable when waiting for a delivery or the satellite or cable guy. So we thought a couple of hours for the hematologist would be perfectly fine.
Around noon I went out the nurse’s station and asked about the hematologist and they had no information except to say they would page him. That was fine and I went back into Nancy’s room and waited with her. And waited, and waited, and waited.
Around 1:30 PM I went back out and asked if the hematologist had returned a call from the page. No, in fact the nurse said she saw him on the floor and asked if he had come by to see us!! At this point I was starting to get aggravated and asked that they track this doctor down and find out when he was coming by.
Now it was nearing 3:00 PM with no news on when this doctor of hematology was going to visit; nearly seven hours after the order went in. I asked to see a hospital administrator and the nurse said she would call. The nurse either called and the administrator never bothered to come down or she never called in the first place. Either way no one came to Nancy’s room to talk to us.
At 3:30 PM, I finally went out to the nurse’s station and told her that I wanted to see a hospital administrator in five minutes and I didn’t care if she had to call Roger Seaver’s office, the President and CEO of Henry Mayo, to get that to happen. I was pissed off!
No administrator showed but the hematologist came in close to 4:00 PM huffing and puffing as if he ran over from his office which was in a building next to the hospital. He looked at Nancy’s chart and peppered her with some questions.
Apparently with a trauma like the one Nancy suffered it is common for the blood count to go down somewhat because of bruising and some blood loss from the fracture. Most of that blood is absorbed into the soft tissue and eventually the count will go back up. He felt that this was the case with Nancy and it was fine for her to go home.
So we waited seven and half hours for what amounted to a five minute visit by a doctor who said everything was fine and she could go home. We never saw the hospital administrator that we asked for repeatedly and essentially wasted most of day waiting around for one doctor who claimed he had only just gotten the order to see Nancy that afternoon.
So let’s recap, the attending physician says he is putting in an order to have a hematologist see Nancy at 8:30 AM in the morning. Then after waiting nearly eight hours the doctor shows up and says he only just got the order to see Nancy. Where was the communication breakdown and why did that happen?
There is supposedly a shortage of beds at Henry Mayo but the hospital did not seem to be in a hurry to discharge Nancy and free up her bed. Does that mean there is no shortage and there for they don’t need to do an expansion?
Now, during that day of hell waiting in the hospital Nancy was in pain and uncomfortable unnecessarily. She needed assistance from a nurse to go from her bed to the bathroom. When Nancy got into the bathroom she spotted a large bug crawling on the floor and was fearful it might crawl into her soft cast. She pointed it out to the nurse who said; “Oh that is a cricket, I don’t kill crickets because they are good luck!” (Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.)
Both my sister and I saw a bug in a hallway outside the emergency room the first day at Henry Mayo. I’m of the mind that a hospital should be really clean and that means no bugs in the buildings especially in the hospital rooms.
Based on some of the comments to my previous commentaries, I should just shut up about the bugs like the malfunctioning equipment or the apparent HIPPA violations and not talk about any of that. Don’t say anything negative because it’s the only hospital we have.
Anyway, after the hematologist left Nancy was cleared to go home. We gathered up her things and they brought a wheelchair to the room to take her down to the parking lot. At about 5:00 PM we were in the car and on our way home. Finally, after four days at Henry Mayo, and wasting most of the last day, we were able to get Nancy back into our house to start recuperating.
The entire experience was an eye opener for us. It highlighted the fact that our community hospital is not the appropriate size to handle the growing Santa Clarita Valley communities.
Henry Mayo is apparently only about 42% of what it should be for the Santa Clarita Valley population. The controversial hospital expansion plan would possibly increase the size by only about 8%. I say possibly because there seems to be no guarantee that if the expansion plans are approved by the Santa Clarita City Council that the hospital will get all the additional bed space they are requesting.
That my friend is a bad idea! The expansion plan is only another band-aid and if approved might bring the size of the hospital to about 50% of what is needed for our community. Are you okay with a hospital half the size it should be? Well, I’m not.
We need to see some bold leadership in the Santa Clarita City Council in turning down this expansion plan and going back to the table to come up with a vision, a plan, to fix the hospital problem for now and in the future. That will take courage on the part of the City Council; it will require members of the community speaking out and telling their elected representatives that they want a regional hospital in the Santa Clarita Valley.
In part five, I will explain my view of what we could have in SCV and wrap up this entire ordeal up in a nice tidy package.
Dave Bossert- Commentary
Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
If this is the first part that you are reading please take time to read the others first so that you have a fuller understanding of our experiences recently at Henry Mayo. As I have written a number of times, the Doctors, Nurses and Caregivers at the hospital were terrific for the most part. But the real issue is that the facility itself is less than half the size it should be to serve the Santa Clarita Valley communities.
My wife’s final day in Henry Mayo started off early with me coming over for a visit around 8:30 AM or so. The attending physician had just left after checking on Nancy. He was concerned that her blood count was down and wanted her to see a hematologist before he would discharge her from the hospital.
He apparently had put the order in for the hematologist right after his visit and we were just waiting for that doctor to show up. I subscribe to the notion of a four hour window of time being more than reasonable when waiting for a delivery or the satellite or cable guy. So we thought a couple of hours for the hematologist would be perfectly fine.
Around noon I went out the nurse’s station and asked about the hematologist and they had no information except to say they would page him. That was fine and I went back into Nancy’s room and waited with her. And waited, and waited, and waited.
Around 1:30 PM I went back out and asked if the hematologist had returned a call from the page. No, in fact the nurse said she saw him on the floor and asked if he had come by to see us!! At this point I was starting to get aggravated and asked that they track this doctor down and find out when he was coming by.
Now it was nearing 3:00 PM with no news on when this doctor of hematology was going to visit; nearly seven hours after the order went in. I asked to see a hospital administrator and the nurse said she would call. The nurse either called and the administrator never bothered to come down or she never called in the first place. Either way no one came to Nancy’s room to talk to us.
At 3:30 PM, I finally went out to the nurse’s station and told her that I wanted to see a hospital administrator in five minutes and I didn’t care if she had to call Roger Seaver’s office, the President and CEO of Henry Mayo, to get that to happen. I was pissed off!
No administrator showed but the hematologist came in close to 4:00 PM huffing and puffing as if he ran over from his office which was in a building next to the hospital. He looked at Nancy’s chart and peppered her with some questions.
Apparently with a trauma like the one Nancy suffered it is common for the blood count to go down somewhat because of bruising and some blood loss from the fracture. Most of that blood is absorbed into the soft tissue and eventually the count will go back up. He felt that this was the case with Nancy and it was fine for her to go home.
So we waited seven and half hours for what amounted to a five minute visit by a doctor who said everything was fine and she could go home. We never saw the hospital administrator that we asked for repeatedly and essentially wasted most of day waiting around for one doctor who claimed he had only just gotten the order to see Nancy that afternoon.
So let’s recap, the attending physician says he is putting in an order to have a hematologist see Nancy at 8:30 AM in the morning. Then after waiting nearly eight hours the doctor shows up and says he only just got the order to see Nancy. Where was the communication breakdown and why did that happen?
There is supposedly a shortage of beds at Henry Mayo but the hospital did not seem to be in a hurry to discharge Nancy and free up her bed. Does that mean there is no shortage and there for they don’t need to do an expansion?
Now, during that day of hell waiting in the hospital Nancy was in pain and uncomfortable unnecessarily. She needed assistance from a nurse to go from her bed to the bathroom. When Nancy got into the bathroom she spotted a large bug crawling on the floor and was fearful it might crawl into her soft cast. She pointed it out to the nurse who said; “Oh that is a cricket, I don’t kill crickets because they are good luck!” (Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.)
Both my sister and I saw a bug in a hallway outside the emergency room the first day at Henry Mayo. I’m of the mind that a hospital should be really clean and that means no bugs in the buildings especially in the hospital rooms.
Based on some of the comments to my previous commentaries, I should just shut up about the bugs like the malfunctioning equipment or the apparent HIPPA violations and not talk about any of that. Don’t say anything negative because it’s the only hospital we have.
Anyway, after the hematologist left Nancy was cleared to go home. We gathered up her things and they brought a wheelchair to the room to take her down to the parking lot. At about 5:00 PM we were in the car and on our way home. Finally, after four days at Henry Mayo, and wasting most of the last day, we were able to get Nancy back into our house to start recuperating.
The entire experience was an eye opener for us. It highlighted the fact that our community hospital is not the appropriate size to handle the growing Santa Clarita Valley communities.
Henry Mayo is apparently only about 42% of what it should be for the Santa Clarita Valley population. The controversial hospital expansion plan would possibly increase the size by only about 8%. I say possibly because there seems to be no guarantee that if the expansion plans are approved by the Santa Clarita City Council that the hospital will get all the additional bed space they are requesting.
That my friend is a bad idea! The expansion plan is only another band-aid and if approved might bring the size of the hospital to about 50% of what is needed for our community. Are you okay with a hospital half the size it should be? Well, I’m not.
We need to see some bold leadership in the Santa Clarita City Council in turning down this expansion plan and going back to the table to come up with a vision, a plan, to fix the hospital problem for now and in the future. That will take courage on the part of the City Council; it will require members of the community speaking out and telling their elected representatives that they want a regional hospital in the Santa Clarita Valley.
In part five, I will explain my view of what we could have in SCV and wrap up this entire ordeal up in a nice tidy package.
Dave Bossert- Commentary
Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
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