[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

Thanks. I will steer clear of it. I would think insurance companies would ban poorly rated hospitals from their networks. That might be an incentive for the hospitals to improve their services.

Wonder why they do not? Hit them in their pocketbooks would be a great incentive to improve

[ThirdOfFive]

Quite the rainbows-and-unicorns article on VRH in today's Daily Sun...

[Michael G.]

Originally Posted by tophcfa

Hmmm, specifics. Try having a serious life threatening illness (not Covid), being in the worst possible agony imaginable, spending approximately 12 1/2 hours in a filthy ER, finally being totally misdiagnosed and sent packing (should have been admitted to ICU) to drive myself home to die, in a golf cart after midnight when I could barely walk or talk. When my wife arrived to save my life and got me to a real hospital in Gainesville (I couldn’t possibly drive myself), the triage team quickly evaluated me and rushed me to critical care. There isn’t a low enough grade possible for the ER at the Villages hospital.

OUCH......Not Good

[Michael G.]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

Can you be more specific as to what was so horrible?
Horrible is conclusory. Did they keep you waiting in the ER for 30 minutes before you saw a doctor? Or did they amputate the wrong leg?

If we know more facts, it will help us decide whether we should go there or look elsewhere. We can make an informed decision.

If someone said that a restaurant was horrible, I would like to know why. Was the soup cold or did you get salmonella?

Here's some great questions that need to be addressed first before
writing bad reviews on all hospitals.

[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

Quite the rainbows-and-unicorns article on VRH in today's Daily Sun...

Still shake my head over these one sided stories

[champion6]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

Thanks. I will steer clear of it. I would think insurance companies would ban poorly rated hospitals from their networks. That might be an incentive for the hospitals to improve their services.

Originally Posted by Stu from NYC

Wonder why they do not? Hit them in their pocketbooks would be a great incentive to improve

Hello. Are you paying attention? Medicare is an insurance company! And low ratings do reduce the medicare reimbursement that hospitals receive.

[Topspinmo]

Only you can answer those questions based on you’re health. If I was in poor health? 45 miles from Orlando or Gainesville IMO not good choice.

[Topspinmo]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

Thanks. I will steer clear of it. I would think insurance companies would ban poorly rated hospitals from their networks. That might be an incentive for the hospitals to improve their services.

I’m surprised insurance lobbyist hasn’t written that into law. IMO there should be law if want sell insurance in United States they don’t make the rules and sell in all states or none. IMO I actually there should be one provider, the government, let government make billions and not private insurance and there CEO’s.

[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by Topspinmo

I’m surprised insurance lobbyist hasn’t written that into law. IMO there should be law if want sell insurance in United States they don’t make the rules and sell in all states or none. IMO I actually there should be one provider, the government, let government make billions and not private insurance and there CEO’s.

We should do a better job taking care of people but do not trust the govt to do a good job in this regard.

[jedalton]

yes

[TheWarriors]

Originally Posted by jedalton

yes

I wonder how many Villagers would approve of a yearly $500.00. Tax solely for hospital improvement? This would not be biased on the value of your home, but every address pays the same amount for the betterment of health care in the Villages. If the answer is no, you are receiving the care you are paying for and should have no complaints.

[banjobob]

My experiences with VRH were good and bad , a visit to the ER was a joke but my pacemaker implant surgery and stay was very favorable.

[MandoMan]

Originally Posted by ExFed

I'm a regular reader of this forum, but I don't post much. However, I got an email yesterday from Medicare.com providing overall ratings and patient ratings for hospitals in our area and thought it might be of interest to some of you.

The ratings were between 5 stars for the best rating and 1 star for the lowest. I took a look and found the following ratings for hospitals in our vicinity and the results were as follows:

Villages Regional Hospital: Overall rating: 2 Patient rating: 1
UF Health Leesburg: Overall rating: 2 Patient rating: 2
AdventHealth Ocala: Overall rating: 1 Patient rating: 2
Marion Hospital Ocala: Overall rating: 2 Patient rating: 2
AdventHealth Waterman Tavares: Overall rating: 4 Patient rating: 3
Citrus Memorial Hospital Inverness: Overall rating: 2 Patient rating: 2

Please note that these ratings came to me from Medicare.com and I have done nothing to validate or invalidate the information they provided. Feel free to visit their website if you wish to fact check me or to further explore the accuracy of the data they provided.

Having personally been a patient only at Villages Regional Hospital on a single referral from my General Practitioner, my personal limited experience is that VRH is the worst hospital I have ever experienced. It may be that they were off their game that evening and my experience might be much better if I have future visits.

After my wife (a retired nurse) and I looked at the results, we are a bit worried that there doesn't appear to be a local hospital that we have confidence in using when the need arises.

I welcome any comments from those of you that have experiences at any of these hospitals that you found to be better than the ratings from Medicare.com.

While there are other ratings available from reliable sources, such as hospital accreditation boards, they tend to agree with the above numbers. This is why when I needed a hip replacement this year, I chose the top orthopedic surgeon at Advent Health Waterman, Jon Radnothy, even though the hospital is a 25 minute drive from my house. All my doctors practice there. The ratings are what sent me there.

Some of the ratings are due to a couple problems. The first is infections patients pick up while in the hospital, called “nosocomial infections”. Advent Health Waterman doesn’t have nearly as many because they are fanatical about avoiding them. Where they occur, it’s because of sloppiness when it comes to cleaning and sterile technique, with the resulting passage of infections to other patients. Back when people wore masks in public, I noticed that lots of people knew nothing about how masks work. They would have masks over their mouths but not their nose, or breath would come out the sides of the mask, or the mask would be too thin, or they would touch the outside of the mask and wipe it all over. Useless, pretty much. Similarly, hospitals have lots of custodial staff and nurse aids who are hard workers but know very little about germ theory and how infections are spread. Training these people is crucial if the infection rate is to go down.

The other big thing that hurts ratings is things like heart surgeries of various types and joint replacements done by doctors who don’t do them often or haven’t done enough of them yet. They may be board certified, and that is important, but still lack the experience that helps them make the right decision when an emergency occurs on the OR table. An orthopedic surgeon who does twelve total hip or knee replacements a week and nothing else will usually be better at it than an orthopedic surgeon who does all sorts of bone surgeries but only does a joint replacement maybe once a month. The ratings focus on these because they are illustrative of what is probably going on throughout the hospital in general.

[Jdburns11]

Originally Posted by tophcfa

Hmmm, specifics. Try having a serious life threatening illness (not Covid), being in the worst possible agony imaginable, spending approximately 12 1/2 hours in a filthy ER, finally being totally misdiagnosed and sent packing (should have been admitted to ICU) to drive myself home to die, in a golf cart after midnight when I could barely walk or talk. When my wife arrived to save my life and got me to a real hospital in Gainesville (I couldn’t possibly drive myself), the triage team quickly evaluated me and rushed me to critical care. There isn’t a low enough grade possible for the ER at the Villages hospital.

I don’t normally chime in here but my wife also had an exceptionally bad experience at this hospital - she stated she’d rather die than go back. Staff didn’t treat her well (medically or personally) despite serious reasons & symptoms for entry - it traumatized her to be honest to some extent.

[Heytubes]

I’ve had to use the Villages hospital twice since May and other than a long wait in the ER (due to half the people being, shall I say visiting from the far, far south), my care was excellent. My second visit is recent, a three week stay where the staff was professional and very attentive 24/7. I’d give them a 4 rating. After that three weeks I was transferred to the Leesburg hospital for chemo and have been treated with excellent care. Remember, it’s only been about 2 plus years that the U of F bought Shands, the Villages and Leesburg hospitals. I think you need to know how ratings are achieved before making a judgment, such as how responsive are the short handed staff, is the food gourmet or are you expecting The Ritz Carlton treatment?
Leesburg is a step above, a 5, as my experience there is on the basis of specialized treatment.
So, while there may be better hospitals and staff elsewhere, I’d return to both of these facilities without hesitation. Remember, people who’ve had bad experiences vocalize louder than those with positive experiences.