Lutheran Hospital – Avoid this hospital Brooklyn!
If you stopped by in the last month, you are probably wondering why I didn’t update. Well our life had some twists and turns which life normally does, but this time it was Lee’s health so it was a bit different.
And he’s on the road to recovery and taking good care of his health with a swarm of doctors and nurses too. Yeah it was that serious. (As a side note, if you know me you know I worry when my loved ones aren’t well…..not this time – God held me close and I knew Lee was going to be alright).
On the last Saturday of October, I went with Lee to his doctor because he had a cut on his foot caused by wearing new boots. His doctor told us to go to the hospital and get intravenous medicine because the cut looked bad. Specifically, the doctor referred us to Lutheran Medical Hospital and a specific doctor there. We went to Lutheran Hospital’s emergency room. The doctor we were referred to was not a podiatrist, so she called the hospital’s podiatrist. The podiatrist came and didn’t do a lot for Lee. He was still in a lot of pain. Lee doesn’t complain (ever) and he doesn’t take time off from work for illness (ever) so I knew it was serious. I stayed with Lee until Sunday night and then I went home. When I talked with him on Monday I realized something was wrong. He spoke very low on the phone and told me he was okay, but I knew he wasn’t. I went to Lutheran with pain medication. He was laying on a gurney in the emergency room for three days and they wouldn’t give him a room.
I found the hospital to be awful and knew I had to get Lee better help. It took hours for me to convince him to leave, but I finally got him to go.
We went to a podiatrist in Bay Ridge – Dr. Paul Liswood the following day and he said Lee needed more intravenous medicine and that the would would need to be operated. He sent Lee to the Wound Center at Methodist Hospital. They gave him a room and the doctors and nurses were much more attentive there. His foot was operated on and twenty minutes after the operation he walked on it.
Lee stayed in the hospital that week as they gave him intravenous medicine and monitored him. They told him the first day that he had a staph infection and the doctors operated the following morning. I am so grateful to them! Lee came home in November and had several nurses visit each day.
One of the strangest things about Lutheran Hospital was that when Lee moved to Methodist, I checked my e-mail and there was an update from LinkedIn (Methodist has wireless and let’s all the patients on – there was no wireless in Lutheran – there was a broken television where Lee was for days!).
Linked in is a social network for business – some people friend me on there because of my family, others because they met me at a conference and of course my old students who have grown up friend me. Linked in told me that Nicole M from Lutheran Hospital had viewed my profile. Why would a hospital worker be interested in viewing my profile – it’s kind of creepy! I mean I thought hospital records were private. It’s strange that she would look in Lee’s records to get my name! I don’t understand why this hospital worker would be interested in researching me online, but I definitely think it it’s wrong. I only met her one day Monday, October 27th.
Even if the employee is new – this isn’t normal behavior. This employee was only working one day while we were there- October 27th! Each day I would go to work, the hospital and then home to bed. On November 5th, I saved the file to my computer because something about a hospital employee researching me on the web didn’t sit right with me.
I am so taken back from Lutheran – Lee’s experience at Methodist was entirely different. The staff at Methodist was very knowledgeable and I never felt any need to worry about him! I wrote letters for each of the nurses because their care was amazing!
January update: We received Lee’s bill from Lutheran Hospital and a different doctor is listed than the doctor who “operated” picked at Lee’s wound. Dr. Moez is a resident of Dr. XXXXX , but he never identified himself that way. We never even heard of Dr. XXX name when we were at the hospital. And I never would have allowed a resident to touch the most amazing person in the world. Seriously? Why isn’t a resident required to identify himself as such and why aren’t we given a paper to say we understand that he was a resident – people should have the choice of having a doctor if they want one. No wonder why he didn’t know how serious Lee’s infection was. It’s almost two months later and Lee has not returned to work because his foot has not finished healing. Lee had the intravenous line removed and is getting around well. He still has a nurse visit every other day.
February 2015: Leon is now being billed by another doctor who he never met at the hospital. So we called the hospital and left messages for him. March 4, 2015 Update: The hospital confirmed that the doctor is another resident that Leon never met.
I posted the e-mail from Linked to Lutheran Hospital’s Twitter Account and Facebook acct as this isn’t normal – let’s see if their IT department does something.I would think that Lutheran’s IT Department would have referred it to human relations, but we haven’t heard from the hospital. This really annoys me because the hospital makes us sign all of these documents, but the employees do what they want with out personal information. I find it so creepy!!
March 4, 2015 Update: Lutheran Hospital finally responded to our query about HIPPA. They claim that the above employee did not access Leon’s private information and simply got it from my complaint on Twitter. It could be true, but if it was, wouldn’t that employee’s supervisor call Leon and explain? It took months for the hospital to respond to this.
The head of the hospital told Leon that another resident also added his name to Lee’s bill – even though Leon never met him! Can you imagine that a doctor you have never met thinks it is okay to bill you!
Hugs,
marlene
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