[cappyjon431]

Originally Posted by PatandBob

After having read and heard about so many negative experiences at the Villages ER, I'd like to share our experience.

Due to severe pain from a ruptured disc, our PCP advised my husband to head to the ER. Within one hour of our arrival (by ambulance), Bob was evaluated by a nurse and the PA, and received his first pain medication. The nurse was outstanding - compassionate, informative, and attentive.

Bob was admitted and had surgery a couple days later. Overall we were very satisfied with the care he received in the ER and on the floor. My one suggestion for improvement would be their discharge procedure. The surgeon signed off at 7:30 AM. The floor nurse called the hospitalist three times to get a ball park idea of when we could expect him to finish the discharge and she never received a call back. After eight hours of waiting, another doctor came to finalize the discharge.

I did feel sorry for my husband's roommate. He had no one with him most of the time and for three days straight I listened to him ask the nurses to change the dressing on his wound. He told them it was to be changed daily. Every time they told him, "yes, I'll be right back to do it" but only after the third day when he complained to his doctor was it finally done.

A word of advice for those who recently moved to the Villages. We'd only been here a few weeks when Bob needed medical care. Being new, we did not at that time have a PCP and because of that we had weeks of delay for treatment. If you haven't established yourself with doctors, do so asap. It would have been far less frustrating navigating the medical system around here if we already had a PCP.

Glad to hear you had a pretty good experience and that the ER care was particularly good. My wife is an ER nurse there and while IMHO they are overworked, the nurses I have met that work in the ER are dedicated to providing excellent care. You might consider writing the hospital and letting them know the good (include your nurse's and PA's names) aspects of your care as well as the areas that were deficient. The hospital tries to respond to patient kudos as well as criticisms and while your report on TOTV is helpful to readers, a quick note to the hospital administrators helps on improving the overall quality of care.