The Villages Hospital
 

My daughter was brought into the emergency room by the EMT;s on Tuesday
October 1 @ 10:10AM she was seen and was told to return to the waiting room at 10:40AM. As of 3:30PM she was still sitting in the waiting room. At 8:00PM she was still not seen and no one came out to even checked to see why she was there that long. She finally left at 8PM and went to Leesburg Hospital where she was seen within 1/2 hour and was diagnose with a possible mini stroke and vertigo. We as a family will never again use the Villages Hospital.

I too had a similar situation this past April. I was told after waiting almost 12 hours I should stay overnight...I left and went back to Atlanta to see my doctor.

Not a fan of TV ER.

Wife had a similar experience in November 2011 with a kidney stone. Haven't gone back but had hoped things were better now as some have had better luck.
Some have said they have so many patients is the reason but this was not the case the night we waited for so long.
Hard to figure as the Leesburg Hospital and the Villages Hospital are both part of the Central Florida Health Alliance.
Guess right now Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala would be our direction to go in an emergency.

Did any of you happen to ask your Villages Sales person how many beds the Villages Hospital has relative to the Villages population????? 228 Beds for almost 100,000 Seniors.......Not even a half of a percent.....I asked this question during our Sales Tour Bus Ride and knew right away they would change the subject as soon as possible!!

Geez.........we must be the lucky family.........3 times in ER and 2 times seen and admitted within an hour. Just this past Sunday, my husband was triaged and admitted within 1 1/2.hrs........in NY he'd still be in a hallway!

Us too, no complaints.

That is inexcusable, but I'm wondering did you inquire as to why she wasn't being helped and if so what was their answer. I would have made my presence known to the point they would treat my loved one just to shut me up. Does she have a local doctor and did you contact him/her?

Disgraceful. Did you ask the folks at the ER what in the world was going on?

Sometimes good and sometimes bad is as bad as always bad.

Until people understand that a hospital cannot operate financially with 85% of the revenue stream being Medicare's low and shrinking reimbursement rates that cannot pay the bills there, and that the amount seniors pay in premium for their supplemental coverage doesn't do it either, nothing will change there.

And then there is administration, that needs to be cleaned out from the top downward and start over. But they're not going to fire themselves.

Howlett1269 did ask what was taking so long and asked where his daughter was on the list and at one point they said she was next. More hours went by and they still had not seen her.

As a walk-in patient to TV Hospital ER with excruciating back pain which was not being relieved by oxycontin I was forced to wait for several hours to be seen although there were only 3 other people in the waiting room. My pain was so great that I couldn't sit and standing was so painful that as I stood leaning on my cane there were tears flowing down my cheeks.

Once I got in to see the doctor, relief came fairly quickly after an x-ray disclosed a major spinal injury.

My next visit, in an ambulance, got fairly quick treatment. It was a life threatening emergency.

I've been admitted twice and the nurses were quite good.

I came away from my last admission with the best cardiologist and pulmonoligist I could hope for as my new physicians in these specialties.

It was NEVER bad, just a longer wait!

Complain to the hospital administrator!

The Villages Hospital
 

I was in TV Hospital this past July and had quite a different experience. I went to the ER at 7 pm after feeling disoriented from excessive sun exposure from working in the garden. Within 10 min I was called in, my blood pressure taken which was over 200, and I was having trouble answering basic questions. I was sent out to waiting room and in 15 min I was taken back in for a Cat scan of my head, an EKG and chest X-ray. I was then placed in a holding area and was told I was staying over night for observation. I was in my hospital room around 12 and was immediately attended to. I was in a beautiful, clean room, and the Aides couldn't do enough for me, even running the bathroom water to make sure it was warm enough for me to bathe. The next day as I was waiting to be discharged, an Aide coming on duty, came into my room and wanted to know if he could get my husband and I anything while we were waiting. My symptoms were serious enough to alert the staff that I was close to having a stroke and they reacted promptly and in a professional manner. I have nothing but good things to say about this Hospital and I am sorry that you had a bad experience and hope your daughter is ok.

does anyone know if these times are accurate
Central Florida Hospitals | Leesburg Regional | Villages Hospital | Central Florida Health Alliance

Everything is relative. I, for one, will not tolerate paying for a whole and getting a half.

Only a short while ago, this hospital made a really big deal about dramatically shortening the wait time until a patient was seen. Smoke and mirrors! It does not count as an improvement if you are "seen", then parked back in the waiting room for hours upon hours with zero communication.

Budget constraints are not the cause of these kinds of problems. Management deficiencies are implicated.

After having run several businesses, I know for a fact that you can do ANYTHING if you just decide that you are going to accept nothing less than success. Once you make that decision, it is absolutely magical how barriers seem to fade.

Actually, they fired 9 admins when I was there.

My wife just had her hip replaced at The Villages hospital last Monday and I can't say enough about how impressed we are. They kept us informed before, during and after surgery. The joint group on floor 5 are the best. Even the food wasn't bad for a hospital and the rooms are private.
Dr Grey performed the surgery and was also wonderful. No bruising and she is walking around the house with her walker without hip pain.
The ER might be different but don't cast the whole hospital as not good. We are lucky to have them.

I was really liking what you were saying until you told me they sent you out to the waiting room with a bp over 200 and unable to answer basic questions. Wonder what could have happened in those 15 minutes in the waiting room - so glad it was nothing, but if that isn't a crises I don't know what is!!!

My husband would not have survived his first heart attack had he been transported to either Ocala or Leesburg. Fortunately, he was already in TVRH when he had his second one this year.

So sad
 

I'm sorry ilovetv, but there is NO excuse for lack of empathy on the part of the staff/nurse(s). It takes 2 minutes to to talk to someone in the ED waiting to be seen. I agree with lack of $$$ and administration but no excuse for common courtesy.

Curious - was a CT scan done at either hospital? Even if they had diagnosed the condition as minor they should at least keep you informed.

Steve - were any of those business successes you had in the medical field relying on almost 90% of your revenue from the government? I worked in private business for 30 years and now for 2 years at TVRH. The two worlds are not even CLOSE! You might have to walk in their shoes to understand fully. Hospitals run through administrators and management like water through a faucet.

Because of a bad experience I had at TV hospital, following a 12-hour wait n the ER several months ago, we were also curious about the "estimated" waiting time. Yesterday, my husband continually logged on to this site throughout the day and it consistently reported there was only a 54 minute wait.

Have yet to meet anyone who waited less than an hour in the ER... Am hard-pressed to believe this is accurate.

I didn't make any excuses for the "lack of empathy on the part of the staff/nurses"!!

There is a long thread here from June, 2013, about how nurses at both TVRH and Leesburg have been subjected to reductions to staffing, seniority, choice of shifts, etc. that have led to experienced, knowing nurses being fed up and quitting and going elsewhere in search of working conditions that are more conducive to patient safety.

See:

https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...h-worse-79757/

Been there 2 years and don't know one nurse that left for patient safety reasons. Many nurses come and go but that's no different than anywhere. Many are still with the hospital but on different units or different shifts. As far as I know our nurse to patient ratio is on par with most hospitals in the U.S. (i.e. med/surg 5 or 6 to 1; icu 2:1 etc.)

PS> Just re-read every post in that thread you linked. Most of it was pathetic overstatements with very little fact behind it. There was almost no mention of people leaving TVRH or Leesburg for patient safety reasons. Let's also remember that TVRH is part of CFHA and is not run or operated by the Morse family. We are growing by about 100 beds (including 27 in the ED) over the next two years. Funding is getting squeezed by Medicare (our main source) but I'm sure it's the same everywhere.

I know that Russ Boston is a diligent and ethical man and I would have to think he knows of what he speaks. He hasn't in six years ever led us astray on this forum.

Seems most of the problems are with people going to the emergency room ...waiting 12 hours in an emergency room seems to be a real stretch for the imagination......

Thanks Gracie - Is TVRH perfect? heck no! My (everyone's) main goal is always patient safety. Our scores in that aspect are very good. Patients don't like the food but that's another story:)

I was recently given the task of being one of the charge nurses for the medical floor (2nd floor) and one of the things we do every day is call patients who were discharged. The vast majority of them are complimentary of the care they received. Do some complain? Of course but if I call 20 people a day I'll bet I get no more than 2 minor complaints and we make every effort to work on those issues and get better.

_________________


Actually I was leaning a little bit your way until I saw the statement highlighted/underlined above..

What proof do you have that this was the case? Saying they were pathetic overstatements sounds pretty defensive especially if you don't work the emergency room. Does every nurse receive information on everything that goes on in the entire hospital?

Not sure how you could possibly know that he would not have survived his first heart attack on the way to Ocala or Leesburg but I do know if he had had to wait as long as we did he could have been in Atlanta or even beyond.....Glad he made it OK.

Curious and seeking data from those who claim that a hospital cannot survive when the overwhelming number of their patients are medicare. From what I am lead to believe, perhaps wrongly, TVRH has almost zero non-paying patients while most other hospitals have huge numbers of them. They also have almost no Medicaid patients, and Medicaid pays significantly lower than Medicare for the same service. So if TVRH does not have either of these two major financial sinkholes, I would have thought that having nearly all your patients paying rates very similar to those commercial carriers provide would be wholly sufficient.

In the past three years I would consider my husband to be a frequent flyer at TVRH....Angiograms (2); Stent: Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm surgery; Heart arrhythmia.......and we would rate all the visits and stays as excellent. The nurses and doctors are so much more than what we read and hear from others. As former NY'ers, we are used to great care and TVRH compares!

Medicare is a problem and will soon be a larger one. But....we are not on Medicare yet and...

For one visit which turned into about 8+ hours we were billed over $12,000.00 and over $5,000.00 was for a single MRI so I don't see how much more we could have been charged to make them profitable. The remainder of the $7,000.00 charges was unbelievable. Got one injection and nothing else but we got bills from numerous doctors that not even the hospital (TVRH) office could tell us who they were when we went to pay the bill. Said we would have to call Leesburg??? I cannot imagine what the bills submitted to Medicare must look like...

Russ,

Do you know the triage protocol for TVRH..? I worked in Mental Health and seem to remember that the ER evaluated patients based on the severity of their illness.......I know that last Sunday, my husband had chest pain and was seen in 5 minutes.

What you say seems correct, but I think it leaves out a key factor at TVRH in particular because of the disproportionately high number of patients who are on Medicare and are chronically ill in their last two years of life--the time in life when a patient's care produces the highest Medicare expenditures:

Medicare spending per patient during the last two years of life

Overall, the average spending per chronically ill Medicare patient in the last two years of life increased 15.2 percent from $60,694 in 2007 to $69,947 in 2010.

In 2010, spending rates per Medicare beneficiary varied from a high of $112,263 in Los Angeles, Calif., to a low of $46,563 in Minot, N.D.From 2007 to 2010, Bloomington, Ill., was the only region in the nation showing a decrease in spending, as spending per Medicare patient decreased from $57,802 in 2007 to $53,674 in 2010....

Patients seeing 10 or more doctors during the last six months of life

Overall, chronically ill patients were significantly more likely to be treated by 10 or more doctors in the last six months of life in 2010 than they were in 2007, as the national rate increased from 36.1 percent to 42 percent.

In 2010, patients in East Long Island, N.Y. received the most intensive care by this measure, with 62.3 percent of patients seeing 10 or more doctors in the last six months of life.

Other regions with high rates included Ridgewood, N.J. (62.1%) and Royal Oak, Mich. (60.2%). Regions with low rates included Idaho Falls, Idaho (14.5%), Grand Junction, Colo. (17.7%), and Missoula, Mont. (18.2%). Only seven regions decreased in this measure from 2007 to 2010, including Neenah, Wis. (from 25.2 percent in 2007 to 21.4 percent in 2010) and Santa Cruz, Calif. (from 31.8 percent in 2007 to 28.9 percent in 2010).

- See more at: The Dartmouth Institute » Barbara A. Koll, MS

Another illustration:

Why 5% of Patients Create 50% of Health Care Costs

While there are various ways to reduce the costs of health care, this fact (Cohen & Yu, 2012 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) should make you stop in your tracks: most business people have an 80/20 rule they apply in a variety of settings (20% of your customers generate 80% of your volume, etc.). This rule tells us that an enormous amount of the health system cost is centered in a very concentrated group of people. Who are they, why are they so expensive, and can we address this relatively small population to the benefit of the whole?

This is when the discussions about courage and character by lawmakers, practitioners and patients moves front and center. These patients tend to be newborns with serious issues and the elderly, who are often quite ill. According to one study (Banarto, McClellan, Kagy and Garber, 2004), 30% of all Medicare expenditures are attributed to the 5% of beneficiaries that die each year, with 1/3 of that cost occurring in the last month of life......

Why 5% of Patients Create 50% of Health Care Costs - Forbes

And meanwhile, Medicare underpays compared to costs of providing the care. I think the high concentration of aged, chronically ill Medicare patients in their last two years of life hits TVRH extremely hard, financially.

Yes we do have about 87% Medicare payments BUT the other 13% are almost all non-pays. Very seldom do we get an under 65 year old who has private insurance. Not sure how that ranks with other hospitals but I know it is a drag on our revenue.

He was in the throes of his attack when the paramedics arrived. I guess the fact that the cardiac cath lab team and the cardiologist were called in before he was transported and he was taken immediately into the lab is my basis. He had his stent in place in less time than it would have taken to arrive in either Ocala or Leesburg.

Do I know for certain that he wouldn't have made it going further away? No. I'm just not willing to chance it, though.

They are building an addition to the hospital as we discuss this. At this very moment.

Now if only we could get some really good medical staff to want to hang out here in central Florida and live with a lot of old-er people.