Villages ER wait
 

Our neighbor has been in the villages er now for 30.5 hours waiting for a room to be admitted. Unbelievable.

If your friend is waiting to be admitted at TVRH they are probably in a comfortable bed in a cubicle, hooked up to a bunch of monitors and under the eyes of nurses while they wait for patients to leave so there is room. This is spring break, the time when hoards of people visit Florida and make it the busiest time all year. Many people get sick and are away from their family physicians so E.R.s and Urgent Cares are flooded.

I hope your neighbor is admitted soon, gets better soon and joins the fun again soon.

Agree

ppp

From CMS (Federal government) website
TVRH aid considered a medium volume hospital
Following stats were taken from the website
Average time patients spent in the Emergency Department before they were admitted to the hospital as in inpatient
TVRH 503 minutes
National average 261 minutes
Florida average 260 minutes

Average time spent in Emergency Department after Dr. decided to admit them as in patient before leaving for their inpatient room
TVRH 256 minutes
National average 92 minutes
Florida average 95 minutes

Average time patients spent in ED before leaving from the visit
TVRH 260 minutes
National average 142 minutes
Florida average 144 min

There is more data available.
My last visit to TVRH was not exactly the visit described in an earlier post and it was not during snowbird season.
I was seen quickly and had CT scan. Sent out to waiting room nauseated with a headache. An hour later, called back to placement of an INT
( IV port). Sent back to the lobby to wait another hour. Taken back and placed in a straight backed chair in a hall between the clean linen room and the dirty linen room. Spent approx on hour there receiving IVs etc. while patients and staff walked by.
From sitting in the waiting room, I observed one young man stating that he had been there for hours (also had INT in his arm),was diabetic and that if he didn’t get something to eat, he was leaving. Another man was groaning and moaning, couldn’t sit upright in his chair and his wife was complaining that they had been there for an hour without pain meds or treatment. Another woman was pacing in front of me talking on a cell phone trying to get her father transferred to a hospital with more than two stars. This was last year before we dropped down to one star.
The waiting room was only a quarter full.
I think the government statistics reveal the quality of our hospital.
For more info, google CMS hospital compare.

Seems like a pretty obvious sign of underfunding and mismanagement.

I get to deal with ED daily. I have yet in 48 years found any ED without major wait times, inadequate staff, and lack of information to family or patient.

We usually wait and hope the oncall guy is going to make the decision we already know needs to be made. Only on 2 occasions have we pulled the “I know people, and am not afraid to wake them up” card.

No hospital staffs for high season. Staffing is scheduled months in advance, and if ED can no longer handle the influx of patients, it is officially closed to any more incoming patients. Except for trauma level, which the ED staff steps back while trauma teams take over.

At facilities I work at there is a 30 minute guarantee you see a physician. Of course once you are seen, there is no guarantee on how long before any measures are taken.

Most EDs are overwhelmed with people that should have gone to an urgent care, or called their physician. While those who are in direct need of a true ED department gets attention quickly, it tend to upset those with less issues wait longer

Since The Villages have nothing to do with the management of either TVRH or Leesburg, and there is a need to vilify in this forum and not work with the owners or management to improve what they believe is inadequacies, and therefore not believe anything will improve, shouldn't you just make sure you go to another hospital that meets your standards? How many that are condemning are going to listen to the President of both hospitals at the POA meeting?

A few weeks ago I had a kidney stone so painful I had to go to an ER. I arrived at 4:30 a.m. on a Thursday morning, walked in, signed the paper at reception and was back in an ER cubical within two minutes at most. The doc came in checked me out as all I knew was I was in great pain. They did a CAT scan, gave me a Flomax, a non-opioid painkiller similar to ibuprofen (so I could drive home) through an IV, gave me a couple prescriptions I could pick up later that day and released me with written instructions and a referral to a urologist. That is how a four star hospital handles things although they do have busier times and wait times. It took a few days and the stone did pass. Yay!

An 84 year old man I know finally had a long delayed bypass surgery at a one star hospital but still has serious heart issues. He recently went to the ER at a two star hospital in another city. They kept letting the street people in ahead of him. After hours of waiting they finally saw him. He asked why he had to wait while the screaming druggies and other riffraff were taken in ahead of him. The MD told him they were screaming so the hospital had to take them first. My friend told the doc "Next time, then, I'll scream!".

I don’t think anyone is vilifying the developers. What we are complaining about is a substandard hospital verified by a government entity- Medicare.
As to not staffing in anticipation of “high season” and increased patient population, perhaps this is a major cause of the inadequacy of the current situation.
Other hospitals in the south and coastal areas of Florida achieve a four star or better rating even with a great influx of tourists.
I am a retired nurse with the experience of working in hospitals in two states and can only say this is pathetic if this is the best the hospital can do.
And yes, I will be at the POA meeting.

I was in St Luke’s Cataract Center about two weeks ago anticipating my second cataract surgery. Nurses took my BP and it was sky high...183. Heart rate also extremely elevated. Doctor said a stroke could be imminent without treatment and immediately called EMS who arrived in a few minutes. I was transported by ambulance to the Villages ER, was seen immediately and treated the doctor. After a brief stay, I was completky stabilized and discharged. My entire experience was nothing less than excellent from the Angels at St Lukes to the very competent and comforting EMS personnel to the Emergency Room Staff. I am glad that I did not listen to all the negative commentary on TOTV about the hospital because had I insisted to go to Ocala instead, I may not be writing this little note. Yes, it was that close.

ER waits
 

I wonder if the hospital could just say " you are not ER material due to your diagnosis, we can recommend an Urgent Care." TVRH actually had an urgent care at one time. If it was done with the patients care in mind, they should not be riled up. They do triage people first.

ER
 

My friend went in at 930 in the am, sat in a chair in the hallway inside the ER until 3 am, then put on a gurney in the hall until later the next day, when he then got put into a cubicle. He finally got a room at 10 pm the next day, and is scheduled for surgery today.

Yes, they can absolutely do that. The Federal law requiring emergencies to be treated only requires that a patient be given minimal treatment that is needed to allow the patient to be transferred. Those that can travel on their own do not require any treatment in the ER. However, I believe that the ER does not want to reject patients because the reimbursement rate for "emergency" treatment is so much higher than normal treatment. For example, a sore throat treated by an internist in his office is one price, but the same sore throat treatment in the ER may be 3 or 4 times as much.

Another issue is that some hospitals have a contract with the local Government to treat indigents. The more they treat, the more money they can negotiate in the contract. I think a lot of this indigent care money comes from the Federal Government as a Medicaid grant, and the state controls it.

Recently, I had a family member end up in emergency. He was taken back almost immediately and put into a private cubicle room and had two Drs come in quickly and several tests done. Three hours later transferred to a room upstairs. During the nearly 2 week hospital stay of which I was a daily visitor, I was impressed with the care, especially after all the negative comments I've read. Was it as perfect care as I would have liked? No, but it was darn good. I've no complaints.