The Villages Hospital
 

Last week i came down with kidney stones, let me say they are very very painful. The attack came on fast. With the pain i went to the Villages Hospital. I was told there is a five hour wait in the emergancy room yes 5 hours.

I drove to Leesburg hospital and it was almost an hour. I can"t believe five hour wait. I was in buisness for years and this sounds like mismanagement. With the amount of people and the age in the villages its just not right. Befor i decided to tell this i called to se how much of a wait the other night. I didn"t get the answer i was hoping for. It was the same about five hours. Been talking with nieghbors and seems people know this is more common than not.

I enjoy the Villages and how nice it is But know i am scared to get hurt here with this situation. Would like to hear from others.

Last year when we took our grandson with an Asthma attack they took him in immediately and treated him...before our daughter completed her insurance verification.

Our next door neighbors house guest had a gall bladder attack and he was seen right away, admitted and had surgery the next day.

They said that to you? That there was a five hour wait? Like at a restaurant?

Oh MY!!

A couple of years ago, my doctor ordered a lumbar myleogram which involves a lumbar puncture with a needle to get to the spinal fluid. After the procedure, you are supposed to lay flat for 4 hours to make sure the spinal leak plugs up. If you don't, you can get the world's worst headache that only eases when you lay down. Within one minute of elevating your head, the headache is so severe you get nauseous. Well, the Villages Hospital had me up and out of there 45 minutes after the procedure, and actually called me 1/2 hour after I got home to come back in as some CT pictures needed to be redone. So up I got and went down there where I reported to everyone I had a headache and could I lay down. No, there were no beds available and they made me wait 45 minutes for the CT to be available. Three days of the most excrutiating pain I have ever had later, they had to do a blood patch which is injecting your own blood to coagulate and patch the spinal fluid leak. I couldn't sue because there was no permanent damage so I wrote a complaint letter to every organization imaginable. While I received the most heartfelt of apologies from Lake Medical Imaging, no one at the hospital ever called to simply say "I'm sorry". Because of this, we will never use that hospital again and only go to Munroe Regional in Ocala.

Graciegirl, this was my 1st reaction, you beat me to it!

Went to TVH with severe tachycardia. Had to wait one hour until finished with insurance and finally got seen. Totally unacceptable.

..

When my wife broke her arm, we arived at TVRH ER at 7:30 p.m. She was seen at 2:30 a.m. We went home at 4 a.m.

The hospital apologized. Over and out.

We have just experienced two visits to the ER in March and spent approx 16 hours total in the ER. It is my opinion that the ER is not that busy. It is used as a holding area for people that need to be admitted into the hospital. They try to only take someone from the waiting room into ER when there is a vacant bed, which only happens when someone checks out of the hospital. There is even a TV set in every ER room and meals are brought in for patients.

The first time we were taken back within 30 minutes, but my husband needed attention. The ER halls were lined with beds and all were full. The place was packed.

The second time, we first went to an Urgent Care Center, to avoid the ER. They found my husband to be in CHF (congestive heart failure) and possible pneumonia, and sent him directly to the ER where we waited FOUR hours. I was quite concerned, but the triage nurse did not consider it urgent. IOW, no room at the Inn. When we did get into the ER, he had a bed in the hall for a short time. The halls had several occupied beds, but it was not as packed as the first visit.

I do think the care was good, once you get into the ER, and they are not going to let you die while you are waiting, but there is just no room to take you in ER.

For broken bones and cuts, go to an Urgent Care Center. For life and death problems, go to the ER, by AMBULANCE. You get in the back door.

My husband is doing well, after a total of eight days in the hospital. We are going to Mayo next week to see his cardiologist.

This is the height of the season, and our 1st trip was on a Saturday afternoon and the next, on an early Friday afternoon.

Comparing a "bad night" in a restaurant to a "bad night" at the hospital is absurde.

"I'm sorry Mrs. Smith, the heart surgeon was having a bad night, your husband is dead. I'm sure you understand, things happen. Give us another chance on another day, we really do better. Everybody has a bad day once in a while." :shocked:

I couldn't figure out what you meant...Bad night at a restaurant..reread everything and then ....decided you were talking about my post.

I did say in a post on this thead.

"That is what they said? A five hour wait? Like in a restaurant? "

I meant it to sound absurd. It seems so incredible.

I was trying to envision someone saying that at a hospital. "There will be a five hour wait."

I have waited in many an emergency room, not here but in my life. I have waited for hours. I am guessing that the triage nurse did not rate my injury or my family members emergency as serious as others. But no one ever said it would be a five hour wait, or a ten hour wait.

I don't know how a staff member could gage just how long a wait it would be.

Colin was taken in right away because breathing emergencies are seen first.

As well as a bleeding emergency or a person in shock.

I never thought I was being picked on, or that the hospital was understaffed. I just thought that someone else was dying and we weren't.

Nurses were busy and clerical personnel when quizzed would say something like "We are really busy tonight". That was in those other hospitals in other emergency rooms.

Is the message coming through all these posts that, given the size and demographics of the TV population, we need a larger hospital or a second hospital? When we initially looked at TV a couple of years ago, we toured TVRH and, if memory serves, occupancy was far below 100% implying that beds were available immediately ... apparently that has changed as the population has grown ...

The tone here worries me. I see a return to conditions which the folks at the POA spent so many newspaper columns condemning a while back!

My last visit to an ER in St. Louis ended up taking over 8 hours from arrival to hospital admittance. The largest and most widely-respected hospital in a city with many, many facilities. I was absolutely appalled and at my wit's end; but, in the end, my wife received superb care.

As I personally believe she would have had here, had she even been here to accompany me to TV!

SWR
:beer3:

2nd hospital in TV has been condemned here
 

I remember clearly, reading in all the outcry about the developer and bringing Moffitt Cancer Center here, that many here think it is outrageous and a waste of money and "duplication of services/facilities" to build the 2nd TVRH hospital in the southern end of TV, south of 466A.

Now we see reality coming to the surface in living color. But I suppose the experts here still maintain they know more than TVRH and TV management.

Want small wait times at existing ER, and don't want a 2nd hospital to be built because you're "right" about knowing more about how to run the hospital system.

Can't have it both ways.

Why not just go to one of the "urgent care" facilities in The Villages, and if they can't take care of the problem, they will call 911 and you will be taken to the hospital and probably be seen right away.

Here in RI and most other area's I have been associated with over last few years. If you go to an ER, unless you are in serious shape. You can expect a wait. That is just a fact of life today. If it is serious enough you will be seen in a timely manner.

Just my thoughts

Wait time in TVRH ER
 

Believe that if you are uncomfortable or in pain, you likely will not get seen as soon as someone in a life threatening situation. That being said,a 10-12 hour wait on a gurney in the ER hallway while they free up a bed seems a bit much.

If you go to Urgent Care Facility for a non life threatening situation and subsequently get sent to hospital, there is still no guarantee that you will have a short wait before being admitted.

I think it is a virtual certainty that if you call 911 and have shortness of breath or sign of stroke or heart attack you will be seen very soon after arriving at hospital. In these situations I don't think it is wise to take yourself to Urgent Care or drive to hospital. Call 911. They can start treating you before you arrive at ER

ER
 

In the three emergency rooms I have worked in the past, no employee would ever estimate how long a wait the patient would have. It depends on so many factors. The RED flags must stand out in understanding the severity. i believe it is all in how you describe your symptoms, severity, length of time you have been hurting. I want to give you an true example.

Two brothers were high on a scaffolding when they came in contact with electric wires. Their boss tried to knock them away to save their lives. We worked on the brothers desparately trying to save their lives. There was all this commmotion going on and most of the Er was filled . One demanded that he be seen immediately due to a fish hook caught in his face. The wives of the brothers were screaming and it was chaos. The Brothers died. They were young. When all was settled down and the ER was back to normal, a man walked up and asked to be seen. It was the brothers boss. His feet were burned because his shoes blew off trying to save the brothers! He was in severe pain but had been waiting patiently because he was not dying. He got it.

No one knows what is going on, when you are on the outside ,waiting to get inside the ER.

I don't think that the Urgent Care places are open all evening.
We are then stuck with the ER no?

I am now working at TVRH
 

Monday and Tuesday I spent the whole day in orientation for my job as Chaplain at TVRH. I found out during that time what the cause of the wait time is there.

1. Some people use the ED as their own personal doctor, coming in with things that should be taken to an urgent care. This clogs things up.

2. And most importantly, for the past 4 months or so, the hospital has been over capacity. When the ICU beds fill up, potential ICU patients have to wait in the ED because they need such a high level of care. This takes up an ED room bed.

It is hard to have a hospital that can accomodate the low and the high seasons in a cost effective manner.
This hospital is a "not for profit" institution. I can assure you that it is not mismanagement. The current CEO and Board of Directors work very hard to trim any little bit of waste or unproductivity out of our system.

As you have read both here and in The Sun, CFHA petitioned for a new hospital down in the Brownswood area. Due to the number of days at overcapacity, the request was approved right away and not one has challenged it. That leaves us scrambling to get all our ducks in a row about one year before one would have expected the approval.

When the new hospital opens it will add 90 more beds and will have the space to expand 4 or 5 times that big.

As are many of the churches in the area, TVRH is suffering growing pangs as The Villages grows out so quickly.

By the way, I took hubby there for dehydration a week after we arrived. We were seen within 1/2 hour. The length of time we were there was due to the number of bags of fluid he needed. Our care was very good.

This is a situation that is vexing to all concerned. :(

You are a good nurse.

Are there any urgent care facilities open all night? Or at least late?

About The Hospital
 

We have some friends who moved to TV in 2005. The wife worked for a doctor's office here in Montgomery. Anyway, she said part of the problem is TVRH is not just for TV residents, but must take anyone in the surrounding area. Like here at the ER, as another post stated, many people use it as "their doctor" and go there with a bad cold or a slight fever.

Our friends stated they go to the hospital in Leesburg when they have to use a hospital.

It is a baffling situation for sure, and is certainly frustrating when you need care immediately.

I want to work there. I toured it and was impressed. We put our house up this Monday!!!!
I am optimistic that it will sell soon. Good location, within a mile of the Hospital, a park is visible from our all our back windows , the pond is behind us and down a hill. It is beautiful here and we bought this place because of the beautiful view and convenience to meeting all of our needs! Swimming, tennis, football, soccer, picnics, trails, and bicycling.

Good luck with the sale of the house. Looking forward to seeing you around the hospital.

Tvrh .....
 

Many times I've waited and waited in ER, 8 hrs the first time when I first moved here. Next time 6 hr wait. I swore never again. I am a cancer patient and moved from Boston where the hospitals are some of the best. My expectations here in FL were not expected to be as good, but never expected TVRH to be so horrible.

One more time my oncologist sent me to TVRH because my blood count was extremely low and I was so weak I could hardly move. I came in the ER in a wheelchair and waited 1/2 hr and then questioned how long this wait is expected to be since I was THE ONLY patient waiting in ER!!!! She told me not long now.

Another half hour went by and by this time I could hardly hold my head up so weak and still no other patients in the ER waiting room. I went to the desk and told her I has leaving and to cancel these reservations. THEN I get told, "Oh don't go; there are six beds empty and we're just waiting for them to be sanitized!!!! With that I swore I would NEVER go there again!!!

Leesburg is so much better than TVRH. When I first moved to the TV, TVRH turned me away after waiting EIGHT HOURS in ER to be seen and then tell me that they are not facilitated to handle a patient with a double port imbedded for infusions and that I would have to go to Leesburg Hosp.

These are just two incidents that I have experienced and there are a number of other incidents that I could go on and on, but I think that you get my drift.

My question is.....with Moffitt here and no staff from Moffitt to handle the influx, if TVRH can't handle the ER now, how could they ever handle the Moffitt patients? This seems to be a disaster waiting to happen. Thank goodness I've found my niche with Ocala Oncology who are wonderful at their satellite office on Rte 441 across from Walmart in Oak Park.

Many of these stories are quite troublesome. It seems that there is a bad situation at the ER and needs immediate management attention.

ALOT of times....and I'm not reading all the posts here...people go to the ER when in fact they should have gone to Urgent Care first. Up north, where I'm from, this is what is encouraged. "IF" you need to be admitted then they'll send you over to the ER/hospital and then the "big guns" get involved. So many go for what they deem "important" and then have to wait. For instance===a few years ago my spouse had an incident where he needed medical attention. We were in a strange town and Urgent Care is where we first went. This was what we needed to do. They said they couldn't take care of us and we'd need to get to the hospital ER. When we got there..."spouse's" case wasn't "LIFE Threatening" so while they ministered to us, we had a loooonnnggg wait before we really had the care we were there for. BUT there were car accidents and other more serious things happening. The triage was being done in order to the seriousness of the cases. We, as lay-people, don't see that thus our frustration. I've heard VERY good things about TVH and I'm keeping a very open mind to that report. I will say in our case (up north) after it being said and done...our situation was cared for and eventually we were sent on our way.

And another thing that sometimes happens and I am not saying anyone on this forum is guilty of it.

If a person had first seen their family doctor, and not allowed their foot to abcess, their fever to go on, their painful foot to continue for several hours after a fall, their cough to worsen...

Than they would have not had to go to emergency...

That being said....the town is growing fast with two to four hundred homes a month being sold...so perhaps that second hospital is needed.

I wonder how the recently announced association with the University of Southern Florida will help....?

The problem with ER's is the fact that they are "for emergencies" and too many people use ER's when they should be going to an Urgent Care.
One of our loved ones works in an ER in another state and she said that it infuriates docs when people come in for simple procedures that should be taken care of by their primary physicians or at an Urgent Care. Trying to filter through all the minor problems, causes long waits, at times, for true emergencies.

411 Urgent Care on 441 across from Wal Mart is open all night and they are
friendly and efficient. Please pass it on.

Seems strange that Leesburg and TRVH would be so dissimilar in their ED's. Same company so you would think same policies.

Billyg...I believe the Urgent Care Facility on 441 across from Walmart is open until midnight. On second thought...I just found the newspaper article I had clipped that indicates that facility being open 24/7. their phone # is 693-2340 The location in the ad indicates Spruce Creek Plaza and like I mentioned, it's across from Walmart.

Pressure from all sides
 

Friends who are ER drs. and nurses often talk of how elderly patients are in multi-system failure and have so many complex things to work up that they are in ER for hours and hours and hours. Also, they talk a lot about how they have to wait and wait for labs and things to come back from other departments....and sluggish computer systems that lag behind the drs.' work pace seem to be the norm. When all the information is in the computer (as is the case most places now), and the software is slow, slow, slow, they can't access the needed info fast enough, and then other depts. like lab and radiology etc. often don't get results back to them in a reasonable time. And then they have to wait for people upstairs to get people admitted and out of the ER when everything is full.

It doesn't sound easy at all to me, but people often demand service as fast as McDonalds. Traumas, heart attacks, strokes etc. cannot be viewed like serving burgers.

Sounds like they need an urgent care attached to TVRH.

I wonder if the budgets are the same since Leesburg is well established and TV Hospital keeps outgrowing their staffing budgets. Also i keep looking at how many Nurses positions are open.:read:

They did this in my old home town, now people don't go to their primary Care Physician or even establish one. The Urgent Care is abused and now long waits there also. My brother practices there and also a family practice associated with the hospital too. He says that people just use urgent care. Now there is a way to find out about the drug seekers from a program. They can track all the scripts a person has attempted to obtain by going to ERs and the Urgent care. These are the patients tying time up faking pain. Also the new computer technology takes up valuable time verses a quick note and on to the next patient.

A back up in he ED usually reflects not only the state of the hospital, but many times, of the community. Depending on what level of trama they are certified at, they may be mandated to hold so many beds available for an actual emergency, especially if other area hospitals are on divert. Another scenario is that all in-patient beds are full. It wasn't uncommon at our hospital that the full work-up was done in the ED and the patient was admitted and discharged right from the emergency room. Another factor is the number of nurses staffing the beds. There might be beds open, but if there's no one to staff them, no patient gets them. A 5 hour wait to me seems pretty average.

My wife worked as a nurse for over 27 years and I have learned a lot from her about not just letting the hospital staff just push you aside. She has always gone to Dr. visits with me and I with her. There is always something you forget and the other person will remember. It is also a good practice that if you care about someone, never leave them alone in the hospital for very long. Patients are in pain and on medications and may not know exactly what is being told to them or what is going on. It is always advisable to have someone else there.

Advice
 

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Having worked in the healthcare field for over 40 years (yikes!), I'm going to offer some advice to y'all. No matter what healthcare facility you are at, you need an advocate to fight for you. When I started working, it was about the patient....and I loved every minute. When I retired, it was about the paperwork. The patient was on the back burner.......very sad. I was so glad to retire because of all the changes in the healthcare field.........and I'm sorry to say it, but it is going to go from bad to worse. YOU NEED AN ADVOCATE TO FIGHT FOR YOU!:spoken:

Excuse my ignorance but could you explain what you mean? If I'm going to go to the ED I need an advocate with me? I think I missed your point.

I'm a RN in an urgent care facility here in MA. We take the strain off of our local hospital ED. Our providers take care of everything from the everyday cold to broken bones to foot care to dermatology to lab work etc. etc. I apologize to patients if their wait is longer than 30 minutes. Yes there is paperwork (actually all computer work now) but we do a great job. Are there frustrations? Of course, but you're dealing with ill people. In our state everyone must have some sort of insurance coverage (mandated by state law) so perhaps it is easier than FLA.

I don't quite know what you mean by advocate - if you mean a friend or relative to go with you, I agree, you shouldn't go by yourself. If you mean some kind of legal advocate, I think that would just slow things down.