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Sorry I wasn't clear. And.........I should have added IMHO. No.........I'm not talking about a legal advocate. I'm talking a relative or friend.....someone who has your best interest at heart. ( I probably need someone to fight for me now -an advocate- as I have a Buffalo headcold & probably shouldn't have written what I did.) Anyway....yes, you need someone with you. Generally, you're not at your mental best when you're ill. Perhaps it is different in Mass....and hopefully, in Florida.....but in New York, the Health Care Professionals are so bogged down with paperwork that the patient often isn't coming first. I'm particularly talking about hospitals ,nursing homes...and even private MD's, Physical Therapists, Visiting Nurses, etc. In New York, the Health Care Professionals have to justify everything they do to the insurance companies to get reimbursed. This requires reams of paperwork whether it be computer or hand. Sorry for any confusion...........and my advice was truly IMHO. Back to the Kleenex! :)

I understood just what you meant SwimDawg. Once after Helene had a heart surgery, she was almost mistaken for someone else. They read your wrist tags and our last name was similar to another child who had just had heart surgery too. The other child was getting tachy from low potassium so a shot was ordered. I was glad I was there.:shocked: I wouldn't have been anywhere else.

Our ex son in law was hospitalized last summer for kidney stones and was on some really heavy pain medication. I stayed with him because his parents are gone. You do need someone to watch out for you because frequently you are in pain or drugged and a couple of times his breathing was very strange due to the heavy meds. A person who cares can even answer for you about menu and little things.

Someone who knows you makes you feel safe and can help the nursing staff get ice and water and other things that do not require expert care.

Plus, when you are feeling better, they can sneak in a cheeseburger.

I certainly understood your post Swimdawg, and you made many excellent points.

Yes, an advocate is needed
 

I've needed an advocate many times in various hospitalizations.....

An advocate to go to the nurses' station to speak for you when you've had the call button/light on for 45 minutes and nobody has come in to see what's wrong;

An advocate to speak for you when you're drugged up on pain meds and can't talk right;

An advocate to tell certain nurses that you are a human being who has a name they should know and use, and that you are not just a lump of flesh and bone lying there;

An advocate to tell somebody in charge that you've been lying there writhing in pain and the meds have worn off and it was time for the next dose two hours ago.

An advocate to go out of the exam room and ask for a blanket for you because the exam room temperature is 50 degrees and you have been sitting on the end of the exam table wearing nothing but a wax paper hankie that you have to clutch across your chest, while you're clutching the bottom piece of wax paper between your legs and are trying to keep warm but your teeth are chattering and you can't go out into the hall naked to ask for help.

An advocate to call the doctor's office and tell him/her that the staff is doing things contrary to what the dr. has ordered.

An advocate to call the dr. and tell him that the first year intern's skills and sensitivity toward the patient are so lacking that you wouldn't let him/her treat your dog.

It's not the norm that these and other aggravations happen, but when it does, it is a miserable time in the hospital and you completely lose confidence in their ability to get you well enough to go home eventually.

Agreed.

As a nurse I try to be an advocate for my patients but it doesn't always work that way.

Choices...
 

The expansion of TV community has nothing to do with TVRH's problems since these problems have been around long BEFORE South of Rte 466 was built!! Was also BEFORE the TVRH building addition!!

Now there's Moffitt coming in and TVRH can't even handle what they have! And, it's TV who is responsible for staffing Moffitt at TV. Not very encouraging. Can only see this going from bad to worse.

Leesburg Hospital is EXCELLENT, as well as Ocala Regional. These are better choices for hospitals than considering TVRH.

I speak from experience as well as IMHO.

I still wonder why TVRH is that much different considering both Leesburg and TVRH are actually CFHA. In fact they use the same recruitment staff for both hospitals (I know because I'm currently working with them for jobs at both hospitals).

So if everyone is correct about Leesburg being that much better I'd like to find out why. I will certainly ask this question when I meet with them next month.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I want YOU for my nurse......if or when I become ill. I will be the tall blond with the self-diagnosis of DBD (Dumb Blond Disease)!!!:D

Careful what you wish for:)

Russ ... I wonder if it is a result of maturity of processes. Leesburg has been around a long time and has mature procedures and processes for doing business. TVRH has grown very quickly .... perhaps its facilities have grown faster than the human ability to manage and hone an operation of this size. And then there is the challenge of dealing with seasonal fluctuations in population.

I have no direct experience with the hospital so this is just speculation.

Possible - Since I'm a 'process' guy maybe I can help. Another angle to use in my interview. I do know that the daily census is way down during the summer months.

I guess everyone's experiences are different, but I will tell you mine. I wrote about this in a similar thread, but don't know what happened to that thread.

My husband had a heart attack in 2009. Had we listed Leesburg as the only place we would go, his outcome may have been not so good or not at all. His attack occurred around 1:30 a.m. and he was in the Cardiac ICU by 4:30 with another stent. He was transported by ambulance a little after 2 and the cath team, along with a cardiologist, had been notified by the time we left here. ER was waiting for him when we got there; he was assessed, prepped, and in the cath lab around 3:00. It was a 10-minute ride to TVH vs 35-45 to Leesburg.

We have only been there for true emergencies, but everything went like clockwork. Sometimes we were there for several hours, but those hours involved x-rays, lab work, etc. which all take lots of time.

Russ

Possibly it could be that the two hospitals are not run by the same in-house executives. Each hospital has their own President and VIP staff.

Two separate entities as far as procedures and possibly policies go. This information one can confirm online.

I speak only from my own experience and no hearsay, and we are so fortunate to be able to be our own advocate and make our own choices for ourselves and our loved ones. ....b

[quote=swimdawg;345528]```````````````
Sorry I wasn't clear. And.........I should have added IMHO. No.........I'm not talking about a legal advocate. I'm talking a relative or friend.....[B]someone who has your best interest at heart.
Not to belabor the point but I just returned from taking my aunt to the neurologist. She is in one of the best-rated nursing homes in NYS. When I looked at her medication list for the neurologist to review, the nursing home paperwork had another patient's meds listed. When I returned to the nursing home, the higher-ups apologized and said, "human error".

While I was there, I received a phone call from a neighbor saying we had a terrible windstorm in our area and part of my roof blew off. Material things can be repaired or replaced. Tomorrow I will be raising the roof with the Administrator of the nursing home!

Bottom line: You need an advocate.

Reply
 

I usually don't contribute, but I couldn't resist the need to make a correction. No hospital may ask insurance information or request a co-pay prior the patient being seen by a medical professional (Nurse Practitioner, Physician's Assistant, or Physician). This is the law.

You memory may be cloudy about the details because you were under stress, but, by the registration clerk you were only asked your name, birthdate, and reason for presenting to the ER. The triage nurse asks more questions of a personal nature within the triage room. After the patient is seen by a Provider, then the secretary may ask for your insurance card and for your co-pay.

Possibly it could be that the two hospitals are not run by the same in-house executives. Each hospital has their own President and VIP staff.



The Villages Regional Hospital and Leesburg hospital are run by the same administartive team. That team is located in the corporate offices in LSL overlooking Lake Sumter. Any wait at the hospital seems like an eon because you are under stress. I have worked in hospitals most of my life and none of them were without waiting. It is the nature of the beast. We definitely need another hospital in TV. Luckily we will be getting one in two years or so.

Several people here have recommended going to an "Urgent Care" facility....in my experience that can be even a worst case option. Three weeks ago my aunt fell during the night. The next day, Tuesday, when I went to see her she was very sore and having trouble walking. I took her to the urgent care facility on Buenos Aires for xrays. We waited there for about three hours to be seen and after the xrays were done the dr. came in and said he didn't see anything wrong but would send the xrays to a radiologist for further screening and call us within 24-48 hrs. if anything was found. She continued to feel bad the remainder of the week but because of her age, 82, we assumed she was just sore and bruised from the fall. One of the nurses at the Springs of Lady Lake decided on Friday to get another X-ray (thank God) and guess what it showed....her hip was fractured. She was immediately taken by ambulance to the TVRH emergency room and admitted. Imagine my surprise when Sunday morning around 9 am the dr. from the urgent care center called me to tell me they just got the radiologist report and it showed there was a fracture....5 days after our original visit. So....in my opinion if it is anything you consider very urgent - go to the hospital as opposed to an urgent care center.

I can say with all honesty; I have never heard, nor experienced this before. Any and everytime I have been to an ER (either as a patient or with the person seeking treatment) the first person I speak to always asks for insurance info.

I agree. In my experience, every visit to a hospital, doctor, urgent care facility or even to a dentist begins with insurance information. When your doctor sends you to a radiology lab for an ultrasound or MRI, even though you have the doctor's prescription in hand, they first get the insurance information. I don't kno w what happens to people without insurance, never having been in that situation. Do they ask for a credit card? Don't know.

We have been fortunate always to have health insurance and that is true, we are always asked first when entering a hospital for any service. That just makes sense. Their employees don't work for nothing.

Twice our family were not asked. Once with grandson with asthma symtoms and once when I was having an allergic reaction to shellfish. I guess because both situations needed immediate attention because each was potentially life threatening.

If the ER people ask for your insurance first, that may be your best indication that you should not be in the ER.

Every hospital encounter my wife and I have ever had involved a request by a clerk for health insurance info. That said, I worked in EMS for over 20 years and have never seen a patient denied treatment regardless of insurance coverage. Asking for the info has no impact on whether you are treated nor the quality of care. Clerks do "clerk stuff" and "providers do health care". Never heard an ER doc asking a patient about health care coverage....they just dive in and do their job and let the bean counters worry about how they will get paid.

Any decent hospital has trained triage RN's who are skilled at tackling the work load. We don't ask for an insurance card when a serious case comes in. If you are ambulatory then, yes, you will check in with the unit secretary who starts you into the process and part of that is a scan of your card (if not already on file). But we must treat regardless.

Even in my physicians only practice we won't turn away a walk-in even though we are supposed to treat only known registered patients. I've never had a provider say no when asked to treat pro-bono.