Villages Hospital Low Ratings
 

For such a physically-beautiful facility, how can The Villages Regional Hospital have such abysmally low ratings?

The Medicare “search for healthcare” tool shows TVRH rated at one-star (out of five) both by Medicare as well as a survey of recent patients. It’s the only hospital within 40 miles rated this low. Leesburg Regional Hospital isn’t much better, rated at two stars by Medicare and only one-star by patients.

The closest hospital with decent ratings is Advent Waterman Hospital in Tavares, rated at four-stars by Medicare and three-stars by patients.

To get top-rated hospitals we have to go to Shands in Gainesville or several in central Florida, but none closer than 50 miles away. We should probably take this into consideration when selecting our specialist doctors. Where do they have admitting priveledges and where do they perform procedures or surgeries? More importantly, are the better-rated hospitals and the doctors who practice there covered by your health insurance plan?

How long will it take for UF Health to improve care at our local hospitals? Or will we have to wait a decade until the new hospital is built and opened in the southern end of The Villages? In that all three hospitals will be owned by UF Health, we can guess how much emphasis will be placed on improving what will then be two older hospitals.

idk about the report, but we've had fine care from them. my husband was there 3 days last year, & have no complaints. i had to use the er LATE 1 night, & couldnt have been treated better.

Don't go to TV hospital if it's an emergency. I took my wife there after she ate something she was allergic to, covered in hives and her tongue was swollen, they would no even make eye contact with me when I tried to explain the problem and handed me a clipboard to fill out, I went back to the desk two more times in a period of over an hour as her tongue continued to swell, not once did they listen to a word I said. Finally a man waiting for another patient that was inside told me I better take her to an urgent care and I did, they gave her a Bennedryl (excuse spelling) injection and watched over her for 30 minutes until all was well. I'll never go there again.

We had excellent care at Advent Waterman, not so much at the ER room at The Villages hospital.

My wife has had to go to the ER at the Leesburg Hospital numerous times this past year. She isn't the best patient in the world by far but has had nothing negative to say about the ER or the wards she has stayed in and has said that the nursing staff was extremely friendly and attentive.

Entitled residents who go there for a hangnail cause the turn times, and if you read reviews on this site, the same people who bitch about the hospital bitch about pretty much everything.

I've read the reviews, but anyone I have talked to that ACTUALLY EXPERIENCED the hospital has mostly good things to say about the care they received. I have not used the hospital but did take a friend to the ER who got a face full of softball and they were all over it, and quickly.

Miserable people are only happy when they are miserable.

But The Ratings Are Medicare’s
 

OK, but the comparative hospital ratings used in the Medicare search tool are used to compare hospitals all over the country. Those that we all know have a top reputation—Shands, Mayo and Baptist in Jacksonville, Sarasota Memorial, Moffitt—all have five-star ratings. Are a few anecdotal reports from local ER patients enough to discount the Medicare ratings which are based on a huge base of actual insurance claims?

I can add an anecdote. I had a popular local primary care physician who has admitting privileges at TVRH tell me, “If you wake up and find yourself in The Villages Hospital... call a taxi and get out of there.” Needless to say, he doesn’t recommend TVRH to his patients.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) publishes and updates information on all hospitals which is used to develop ratings for use by the public to compare hospitals available to them. The Medicare ratings include actual evaluation of hospitals based on actual Medicare claims of the following factors:

—Patient Experience Measures are patients' opinions about the care they received.

—Process Measures give information about how many patients get the recommended care for their condition.

—Outcomes Measures show how well patients do after they receive treatment.

—Patient Safety Measures show how often patients suffer from hospital-acquired infections.

—Cost Measures are the cost of care for specific services.

A bone of contention with actual hospitals who see their ratings, and disagree with the weightings, and the comparatives, using the latent variable model. They are now coming out with a new methodology with ratings being released in April, which actual hospitals agree with be fairer, but the key is the data being used at least a year old and up to three years old. So the data is always old data, from certain aspects of reporting, so improvements take 2-3 years to get the improvements to show up in the data.

Also, CMS only uses Medicare data for the majority of the measures reported, which means not the whole picture at all

So, this is from CoachK's mouth who works with and reports to CMS

husband guy

I wonder if the rating procedure is slow to publish? University of Florida has an excellent rating and since they are now in charge of the "beautiful building" that the Morses built and lease to Hospital Corporations, it should be improved soon.

I have begun to realize that doctors do not live by medicare alone. With the high percentage of elderly patients in TV, don't hold your breath waiting for better health care.

I know the rating have been low but I thought Shands took over managing the hospital last year. It will take some time for the ratings to improve but I an guessing things are improving.

I believe previous threads have indicated that while the ratings are low, a large number of folks who have been there received exceptional care...my wife and I included. I know we need to look for ratings and reviews but be careful, sometimes the people who develop those ratings set the criteria to be a catch all. The ratings systems will be changing but I recommend using the ratings as part of your evaluation, and search out personal experiences and medical input to complete your view.

Happy people are only miserable when they are very ill and can't get the help they need.

With the average age in TV being 67 there are a lot of non-medicare patients here that also need care. When all the new permitted apartments and non age restricted single family homes and condos are completed there will be even more.

Glad to see a reply above from someone who has first-hand experience with CMS, the company which creates the ratings for Medicare.

I’ve heard that UF Health has gotten rid of quite a few under-performing medical and support employees at TVRH. But I’ve also heard that they’re having a tough time replacing them. The Villages reputation precedes it, and from the viewpoint of many being recruited to work and relocate here, the story isn’t always attractive.

Some of the issues that UF Health is having a hard time defending when trying to hire new staff include:

— Too white, not a great place for minorities of any kind.
— Not attractive to young families, OK schools but little else.
— Too far from the cutting edge medically
— The Villages is too homogeneous. And to live in a younger, more diverse community would require a long commute.
— Too one-sided politically
— Mostly geriatric patients (doesn’t enhance their experience/resumé)

Anecdotes From Knowledgeable People
 

From a nurse-supervisor friend who worked at TVRH... ”The hospital is OK for simple illnesses or needs. But if you have something that might require more complicated treatment or surgery, go somewhere else.”

From a Villages Health doctor... ”If you are admitted to TVRH, be sure to ask to have a Villages Health hospitalist listed as your attending physician. They will probably resist, but be insistent on this issue. Otherwise good care there can’t be assured.”

From another friend, a retired health insurance executive who evaluated TVRH extensively before moving here... ”One of the reasons for TVRH’s low ratings is the high number of people who become infected while in the hospital. The frequency of infections and the causes should have been corrected within the first year or two after the hospital opened. Instead, ten years later, TVRH may even have a higher level of patient infections than when they opened.”

From a friend who works as a volunteer at TVRH...” My job as a volunteer is to wheelchair patients to their cars after they’ve been discharged. I hear all the complaints and horrible stories. It’s unbelievable.”

We should all be happy the hospital is here and close enough to sometimes save lives.

My wife had a serious bicycling accident in TV ten years ago. She was transported to TVRH by ambulance on a Friday afternoon.

We had no established physician or provider here at that time. We interviewed three surgeons over the weekend while she remained in traction.

Major surgery was performed on Monday morning. Thankfully all went well and we were so grateful for the care she received by everyone at the hospital.

Sadly, her surgeon has since moved and she now practices in Georgia.

From this experience I have nothing negative to say about TVRH. My wife was well cared for.

I rather bitch than be dead in TV hospital. For example, they have an abysmally poor record of treating sepsis with only 20% of the time diagnosing it correctly.
I trust Medicare ratings more than a puppet’s propaganda.

Those are the positives. Any negatives?

The Villages hospital ratings you refer to are from the patients. The patients are predominantly from The Villages; hence, the most entitled people in this country. The Villages Hospital is just fine.

The Villages Hospital has vastly improved since being taken over by UF Health. The change was quite noticeable. I wonder how long it takes to update the data being used in that website you went to.

When we moved here 20 years ago it was because the Leesburg hospital was the second best rated for heart attack care. I've since had several Leesburg took care of me both times and I'm still alive. I'm not sure what the reason the ratings are the way they are but I can probably tell you it's due to having doctors with less experience. If they would hire doctors from New York or Chicago that have seen it all with 20 years in their belts it would be a difference also if you don't own it you don't really care. I don't know whether or not this is a for-profit hospital not owned by the doctors but if it says Advent then I presume it's a large corporation where the doctors don't care about the profits or possibly the patients as much as if they owned it with their names on the bills and corporation papers

No the University of Florida took over the TV hospital. Shands is a University of Florida hospital.

Remember UF shands just acquired TVRH and LRMC and is cleaning house.. plus lack of housing for employees...most drive from out of the area now.. advent health Orlando if a major city.. stay healthy and you wont need a hospital.

Updates... with Medicare for ever..if ever..remember its data entry..

I can’t use the hospital or medical services here at The Villages because they use some proprietary insurance thing and don’t accept Blue Cross/Blue Shield. AdventHealth/Waterman in Tavares is rated #3 in the Orlando Area and #28 in the state, and that’s a mile above the hospital here. It’s 35 minutes from my house. AdventHealth/Waterman is tied to AdventHealth/Orlando, however, and U.S. News and World Report says that is the #1 hospital in Florida. However, it is also gigantic, while Waterman is new and cozy.

Here are the criteria used for the ratings: “ To help patients decide where to receive care, U.S. News generates hospital rankings by evaluating data on nearly 5,000 hospitals in 16 adult medical specialties, 10 adult procedures or conditions and 10 pediatric specialties. To be nationally ranked in a specialty, a hospital must excel in caring for the sickest, most medically complex patients. In most specialties, the top 50 hospitals are nationally ranked and additional hospitals may be recognized as high performing. Hospitals that do well in multiple areas of adult care may be ranked in their state and metro area. The ratings in procedures and conditions focus on typical Medicare patients and eligibility is based on the number of patients treated. See details for the quality measures that factored into each evaluation.”

If you go to AdventHealth doctors at The Villages, they can steer you to AdventHealth/Waterman if needed or get you into AdventHealth/Orlando if you have an especially difficult case.

One thing I want to make clear: the rating of the hospital is not based on the nursing care, or at least only partly, as when administration won’t hire enough nurses. In my experience, even hospitals with low rankings may have many really wonderful nurses and other staff, and the hospitals may be clean and modern and attractive. Hospitals that don’t treat thousands of the sickest or poorest patients, aren’t regional trauma centers, and don’t have a legion of interns and residents using patients as learning tools tend to have lower ratings. Yet most patients don’t need those things, and they may make a hospital more dangerous. Many excellent surgeons actually don’t want to work at a “teaching hospital” because the teaching takes a lot of time that could be used making more money. Few doctors get rich these days, so I can’t blame them for wanting more patients and not wanting to live in a big city.

You need to do your research and find out why they get a low rating. It’s not because of the care people get once they’re admitted. It’s because of the emergency room waits and so forth which is a direct result of the age of the population surrounding the hospital. They probably get 2 to 3 times the amount of ambulances coming in there that most other hospitals do.

:bigbow::bigbow::bigbow:

Ratings will go up when the hospitals are staffed adequately for the facilities that exist instead of building more. That means hiring and retaining employees with decent wages and hours. Even the doctors offices are short staffed. Sad since health care is one thing they promote for The Villages.

Sorry, but I disagree. I would challenge you to search my postings and find a negative one. I think your experience at TV Hospital is largely dependent on which department you are admitted to. I have had excellent care in the cardiac ward but my wife, on a weekend, was largely ignored in the ER. It is a long story, but after doing virtually nothing Saturday, Sunday and half a day on Monday, being in tremendous pain, so much that she could not lie down to sleep, they finally told her we had to take her someplace else because they couldn’t help her. Dr. Oduntan, at Shands, saved her life. I too hope U of F will find a way to change the attitudes and non-actions of the staff but, until their hospitals ratings go up, I am never going there again and I would recommend you consider doing the same for anything serious.

The Villages Hospital
 

I love living in The Villages. The only negative and unfortunate aspect of living here is the medical care, specifically our hospitals. As a former health care professional and former volunteer at The Villages hospital, I see that although the Administration is trying to improve its ratings, it is still far from being at a 3 or 4+ rating.

Why?
In my humble opinion and observation, the areas needing improvement are:
1. Emergency room -
A. better staffing,
B. Staff attitude- teach and enforce caring and compassionate patient care by the providers!
C. Improve timeliness in the ED! Biggest gripe with the most negative reviews.

2. Communication- (or lack thereof), mainly by physician to patient and or family!

3. Physicians! The hospital contracts with a hospitalist group. Is there any buy in and anything at stake by these contracted doctors/ hospitalists? They need to be accountable and committed to vastly improve their communication skills with patients and their families and be able to provide high quality medical care.

How can we attract high quality practitioners here???

Nursing care seems to be good once the patient is on a unit. Yay!

So most of my friends here say, including moi, if we have to be admitted to a hospital, go somewhere else!

Yes I will send this to Administration.

When did TV hospital stop accepting BC/BS ?

Villages hospitals low rating
 

On May 23,2020 I suffered a cardiac arrest in Sam's parking lot. Two "angels" emerged from the watching crowd and offered my wife assistance with me and pounced on my
chest with CPR until the EMS arrived. EMS shocked me and took me to the Regioinal Hospital ER. 4% of cardiac arrest people who suffer cardiac arrest out of the hospital survive, The rest die. I woke up 24 hours later in ITC and stayed there for 3 weeks. Because of the 'angels" , EMS and the hospital, I'm alive. THe treatment was as good as it gets with any hospital. I have nothing but good things to say about them. I haven't found the"angels" to thank them for my life, but I have thanked the hospital for their services. Thank God they were there.

The number of incorrect diagnoses given by "doctors" in The Villages hospital is off the charts. If you need a good diagnostician don't go there. Try Shands or Orlando or even Ocala first.

Keep guessing. Improvement - NOT.

And you know this how?????
Please enlighten us with the number of diagnoses made and the number that were incorrect, and how you are privy to this info
Until then, I call BS

There are some of us here that actually respect your professional opinion yet you have not commented at all on this. If you needed to be admitted would you choose this hospital?

I worked at TV Hospital for a brief moment in time. It was an awful experience. The Drs and nurses were very nice and worked hard, but there is a chronic staffing problem. UF has tried to remedy this with very generous compensation packages, but it’s not enough. For the few shifts I worked I was overwhelmed with the heavy workload and lack of support staff. I was extremely worried about the welfare of my patients and the integrity of my professional license. I was not the only employee who felt this way. Fortunately for me I was in a position where I could walk away. A lot of the people working there are dependent on their job. Based on my firsthand experience, I believe the problem is that the local population has severely outgrown the hospital. A new hospital should have been built and ready for business 5 years ago at least.

Choro&Swing is wrong.

The Villages Hospital does accept BC/BS. The Villages Health primary care offices do not accept BC/BS.