Sounds like your Doctor is a problem, not the hospital!

And then there’s my dad, who passed away due to, IMO, negligence from that very hospital. The staff weren’t nice and one of the nurses actually told my dad to cover his mouth when he coughed. He was in the hospital from complications of radiation for LUNG CANCER…..

The hospital hired that doctor. But yes, I’m sure the hospital itself, as in the building and equipment would warrant more than one star.

The hospital in Leesburg is managed by the same people as the Villages Hospital. It received a 1 star rating.

I seem to be an exception to a lot of rules that people state on this forum and in The Villages.

I regularly eat at restaurants in The Villages that get poor reviews for service, price and food quality. I always seem to get great service, very decent prices and quite tasty food. I wonder why that is. I'm friendly with the staff and management in my interactions and they are at least as friendly back. I don't find the prices as ridiculous as I have found in other places I've eaten out in(some smaller towns and some larger cities plus travel all over the country and to multiple other countries). I am not a gourmet but I am pretty darned picky about the foods that I do like. And I just don't run into the disappointment that others seem to. Is it me? Or what? Or who?

I've also had a number of surgeries here and in other states and have seen medical staff for routine tests and checkups and the like my whole life while living in three different states. That includes here in The Villages. For basic family doctor visits and checkouts, for simple stuff like colonoscopies and kidney stone removal, for minor eye surgery and for more major spinal surgery, I've had them all done in The Villages at The Villages Hospital and related medical centers and offices and by local doctors and staff, most of whom were highly recommended by my family doctor, other medical staff and/or friends and family living in The Villages. I have never been unhappy with the work I've had done. I've run into nothing but caring, talented and helpful staff who treated me proficiently and in a timely fashion. I've recommended all of them to my own friends here.

Maybe I just didn't retire here to start a career in complaining and picking fault, but my experience seems so different than what I read about that it makes me wonder... Do people ONLY write about their experiences here in The Villages when they feel the desire to complain? Does no one seem to know how to compliment when it is due?

Boy, I must be weird. It's the only answer that seems to make sense.

You are not "weird." Nor, are others constant complainers. Your taste in food may be different them some. Me? I find the restaurant food here extremely bland. But, I was raised in a family where spicy was the norm. I have a friend who I would consider a gourmet cook. She can prepare meals 100x better than any restaurant here. She stays home instead of eating out. It is about PERSPECTIVE.

No one is kinder if they see fewer faults than others. It depends on what someone is comparing food, service, or medical care to. Some have experienced much better in other cities.Therefore, the Villages is a disappointment. Some, like you, find everything in the Villages comparable to where you came from and are familiar with. Read posts and use your own judgement. No one is completely right and no one is completely wrong. We all have different experiences. Therefore, our perspectives will vary immensely.

My experience at UF Leesburg was definitely not positive. The explanation is a long, but if important if you experience a life threatening illness. I was admitted from the emergency room with a staph blood infection which was rapidly spreading (already had resulted in pneumonia if both lungs). Over the next two days, I had multiple MRIs. Those studies (as interpreted by the radiologist) indicated that the infection had caused abcesses on my spine and heart valves) and emergency heart and spine surgery was required. Fortunately, as I was to later discover, UF Leesburg does not have a neurosurgeon on staff. I did not want to be transferred to Shands, so my wife, a retired RN, called our retired physician friends in Orlando who recommended a neurosurgeon and Advent Hospital. I was transferred to Advent Rollins (arriving at 10 pm) and placed in Neurosurgery Intensive Care in anticipation of emergency surgery). At 6 am the following morning, Advent had a medical team consisting of a neurosurgeon, multiple infectious disease specialist, cardiologist and invasive cardiologist, who began arriving to examine me. The rest of that day and into the evening involved multiple MRIs and CAT scans. That is when we discovered the issues with UF Leesburg. The Advent MRIs did not support the radiologist report for the MRIs at UF Leesburg. When the Neurologist obtained the MRI from UF, he stated that that the images were so bad that neither he or the Advent Radiologist, could interpret them. If UF Leesburg had had a neurosurgeon I would have undergone unnecessary spinal and heart surgery based upon a MRI that had been improperly interpreted. Instead, the Advent infectious disease team were able to treat me with antibiotics only.

Measures of Central Tendency
 

1 out of 9, it sounds like you are very fortunate. Healthcare is a major consideration, if not the most important consideration for retirement. IMHO the best advice for anyone relocating here would be to book a primary care doctor appointment ASAP, even before arriving if possible! Appointments are tough to get around here. Planning healthcare is crucial.

Villages Hospital
 

I just had a heart catheterization at the UF Villages hospital. I found the facilities and personnel to be exceptionally good. Many thanks to nurse Jennifer and to Cody and the procedure room staff, including Dr. Marwan Mihyu.

I had a shoulder replaced there in April, they were top notch.

UF Health Shands Hospital is one of highest rated hospitals in the USA, by most every measure.

The hospitals in Gainesville are excellent, as are most that are in Cities with a major higher education institution such as the University of Florida.

it's my guess they were overloaded with work & having longer shifts, - that kind of stress can give anyone burnout. i'm not excusing their actions, mererly proving insight as to a reason for it . hope you are doing better now.

I've only been to the ER in the Villages Hospital once, but sat in the waiting area for 7.5 hours before being put into a treatment room where I sat for another half hour before anyone came in to check on me. I have heard that the other parts of the hospital is great, but I never got that far. I know another person that sat for 5.5 hours and finally got up and went to the ER on Rt,.466A where he was treated immediately upon arrival and was then transported to the hospital in Ocala. Guess it is all up to perspective.

Or the diagnosis…………

as with all the " i went to this hospital and the results were excellent"

you don't have the background nor knowledge to evaluate the entire hospital with just one event.
that's why CMSS looks at a huge amount of data and audits the hospital results, and pays incentives on increasingly improved results, not star level, but improvement levels of results. The incentives can be in the millions of dollars, and may determine if a hospital has to borrow money to fund operations or not. Way more involved than what you just experienced. You as a patient can really only influence patient satisfaction, and not any internal processes which may be consistently deficient.

NOT IN A FL HOSPITAL -> A friend's (nurse with 20 letters to her tests passed and did regulatory reporting for a hospital) father came home with a catheter left in by mistake, went back to the hospital the next day to see about getting it taken out. The doctor told him to step into the closet and lower his pants, he came in and removed the catheter. Did it this way to avoid reporting a revisit to the hospital to CMS. daughter found out after the fact and was not there.

And as for all events, everything works until it doesn't, and you hope that your doesn't work event doesn't mean something permanent.

just hope your everything works luck doesn't run out.

I thought Rusty Nelson put up an excellent YouTube video this past weekend asking legitimate and constructive questions as to whether things like medical services and hospital beds and other services are keeping up with the population growth of The Villages. It's not a topic often brought up, at least on the YouTube channels, but he asked really good questions like how many hospital beds are there now compared to 10 years ago and what are the plans going forward to keep up with the population growth. I recommend this video to everyone to watch.

///

Guess again. Medical care in immediate Villages area is lacking, contract Drs and RNS is not what I’m looking for at this point in my life.

Dam, those are good experiences compared to what I went through at that hell hole. Got there around noon and was discharged after midnight without any care except for an IV of fluids, a total misdiagnosis, given a script for drugs I didn’t need, and sent out the door to drive myself home in a golf cart while on my death bed. When I finally managed to get to a real hospital in Gainesville, they took one look at me and immediately put me into critical care and proceeded to save my life. All the incompetent idiots had to do was look at my blood oxygen level and red blood cell count and they would have realized I was basically drowning on land. An average first year resident could have figured that out in minutes, but not anyone at the Villages Hospital in over 12 hours.

Third world country medical care in the area of the villages, and in large areas of FL

FL is one of the highest fraud perpetrating locales in the USA, medical industry is not immune to fraud.

I go to AdventHealth Care in Tavares which is only about 20 miles from here. The hospital gets excellent reviews (see below).

AdventHealth Care Center Waterman in Tavares received an overall rating from CMS of 4 stars compared to the FL average of 3.48 and a National average of 3.32.

AdventHealth Care Center Waterman was also reviewed by Medicare to have a rating of 5 out of 5 stars.

Patients gave an overall rating of 91 out of 100. Furthermore, patients would rate this hospital 91 out of 100 in terms of recommending others receive care at this facility.

Relative to other hospitals nationally, the cost is lower at AdventHealth Waterman. At this facility, they have 468 providers across 41 primary specialties.

One star better than no star or no hospital.

Maybe cause all fraudsters moving in and continuing their careers? :22yikes:

When I was there in 2013 for a severe medical emergency, I had excellent emergency care. I am only alive today because of the doctors and nurses who were on duty that day. Thank you.

One thing I've found in life is that ratings are mostly bull. I've found this on cruise ratings (raters said the ship was "old and tired" which I found to be the opposite), hotel ratings (wildly different than my experience) and places like Yelp, which I've found to be totally unreliable on several occasions. Haven't we all at one time or another been pressured by a salesman or manager to give the business the full five stars in our ratings? It's no different for hospitals. Rely on your own experience or from trusted friends, and even then, your experience may be quite different. I had my gall bladder removed from the local hospital in mid-2023, and it was a very complicated problem with severe blockages, and my experience was great. Nurse care was outstanding, my surgeon was competent and had a good bedside manner, and the hospital itself was clean and neat. Your experience may be different.

Tophcha: I remember your posting about the horrible experience you went through at the time. And the misdiagnosis. It seems you had a dangerous tick-borne disease that you had brought from Massachusetts and they couldn't figure it out and it never occurred to them to send you someplace where it could be figured out. That is just scary.

Hospital ratings are based on comparisons. If a five star hospital has a 1% complication rate, a three star has 5%, and your hospital has a 10% complication rate it is doing poorly. But keep in mind that still means 90% of people did not have a complication and will be here talking about their excellent experience.

It is those kinds of differences across many criteria that got the local hospital its 1 one star rating. Most patients do well but too many, compared to other hospitals do not get quality care.

well typed!

That is correct, I got bit by a tick in Massachusetts sometime in late April or early May before returning to the Villages. The tick was kind enough to infect me with two infectious diseases, Babesiosis and Lyme disease. By around the Memorial Day Weekend the symptoms began to rear their ugly heads and got worse by the day until early June when I made the horrible mistake of going to the Villages Hospital. Babesiosis is a blood parasite that exponentially multiplies and blows up red blood cells, which carry oxygen throughout one’s body. The only thing close to Babesiosis is Malaria. As the parasites destroy red blood cells, the body’s essential organs become deprived of oxygen (hemolytic anemia). My kidneys and liver were failing, I couldn’t think straight, and my spleen was about to explode from filtering so many dead red blood cells. I was drowning on land. After over 12 hours in the Villages Hospital they erroneously concluded I had a unitary track infection and gave me a script for an antibiotic and sent me packing.

I am a very reasonable person and didn’t expect them to know what was making me gravely ill, but the incompetent idiots have no excuse for not recognizing my red blood cell count was critically low, my blood oxygen was practically nonexistent, and I was on my death bed. There is no excuse for anyplace calling themselves a hospital to be so grossly negligent. There isn’t a low enough rating I could give that place. If I didn’t get to a real hospital in Gainesville in short order I was a dead man.