Mercy Gilbert Hospital review: Mistreatment by ER Doctor and Staff 8

My wife and I are both college educated and have had a number of hospital experiences. My mother was an RN. I would agree with the negative comments in this review board. Pray that you NEVER have to go to this hospital. These experiences appear to be everyday occurrences. My wife was admitted, by her surgeon, after experiencing tremendous pain from her hernia surgery. From the time my wife reached her room, on the 4th floor, there was a constant parade of apathetic, unqualified, unprofessional and low rent personnel staff members that made their way into my wife's room. I will spare you all of the details, but we never had ONE quality medical professional attend to my wife. From nurse Danielle laughing about not being able to find parts to put together the medicine dispensers (while my wife is almost passing out from pain) to people who couldn't even speak the language, people who did not know how to get the pain medicine dispensed, to staff (Meko) ignoring my wife's oxygen machine sounding an alarm for over 3 hours, all the while my wife's O2 sat was in the 70's and that's the tip of the Meko iceberg. Maybe if it is a life and death situation, but if you have a choice NEVER- EVER let yourself be admitted to this sad, pathetic excuse for a hospital. The unprofessional - apathetic attitude must start at the top, because it always does.The "culture of care" at Mercy Gilbert stinks! if you are a physician admitting your patients to MG you truly need to rethink your association with this hospital.

I was misdiagnosed and mistreated in the ER being accused of being a meth user and they refused treatment of giving me pain medication and told me that once I stop doing meth, they could help me. I was treated as a drug addict which I am not. I told them there is no way that I would ever do meth and there must be a mistake. They said that based on the blood test they did, that meth was the only thing in my blood and that the lesions on my face indicate meth usage. I told them that I had a staph infection and my doctor thought it was Shingles and was seeing a dermatologist the next day. I even asked if the medications I take would have shown up as meth, specifically Adderall and he said no. I left there traumatized and had severe anxiety among other issues. The Dermatologist gave me Valtrex and diagnosed Shingles. I went to my PCD also and had them drug test me and they even suggested perusing this with an attorney and the AZ Medical Board. I was a victim of a violent crime and have PTSD among other conditions of Chronic Pain, Fibromyalgia and Arthritis. I was going to apply for disability but with meth usage on my record, I surely will not get it. It was a horrible experience and I deserve justice for what I went through and how I was treated.

I FEEL YOU! I CALLED THE HOSPITAL WITH MY FIRST COMPLAINT. I'VE WRITTEN A SEVEN PAGE LETTER TO THE HOSPITAL ATTN: CHAR SHEPARD..APPARANTLY THE COMPLANINTS OR COMPLEMENTS DEPARTMENT. AND NOW I'M WRITTING MY COMPLAINT ON THIS SITE. WHY CAN'T DOCTORS DO THEIR JOB...TO BE THERE FOR THEIR PATIENTS AND GO OVER AND BEYOUND THEIR DUTIES TO KEEP US ALIVE! I AM CRYING NEGLECT BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THIS HOSPITAL STAFF AND DOCTORS ARE DOING! NEGLECTING TO WHICH YOU CAN ADD PAIN AND SUFFERING. 2 YRS OF THIS I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE. I BELEIVE THAT THE HOSPITAL DOES QUANTITY NOT QUALITY WORK!

This hospital has repeatedly caused either my near death by lack of attention or directly added to the risk, damage to my body and suffering by ignoring the disease (and like all of the medical establishment) throwing dangerous medications (many to try at home alone!) at my symptoms to stiffle them.
I have repeatedly been treated like a drug addict for following my prescribed pain medication (yeah, I know! Go ahead and skip this one because I'm some sort of criminal or idiot...right? NOT!). I chose Mercy Gilbert after being told it was different, and in some issues it really is... (Most nurses and staff really do WANT to care) but even those issues are made useless by the doctors shutting it down as soon as they walk in. I've had decent doctors, friendly doctors, and flat out ignorant, judgmental, uncaring, unwatchful, even criminally negligent (on more than one occasion) doctors.
Each step up in care has resulted from, not their knowledge or care, but MY finding the problem and them reacting (still dangerously and incorrectly) to it.
At one point after coming to the hospital unable to breathe, unable to stop shaking/trembling with teeth chattering and tears running down my face from the pain, severe weakness in my extremities (on admittance, during the ecg/ekg was told to 'Stop it now, or we're not going to do this.' In the subsequent attempt I made to control my shaking, (after the nurse had literally DROPPED/SLAMMED the bed into a completely flat position against my express, experienced warning that this would increase symptoms) my symptoms actually increased and I began to choke. They got their 6 seconds of my heart's electrical history and sent me out to the waiting room for hours telling me I was in no immediate danger.
Upon final admittance to the E.R., I was never seen by a nurse, only an assistant that came to take some medical history but wouldn't listen to anything I was saying... any 'I don't know' was immediately recorded as a 'NO!' She asked about 6 questions and left (and this was after she left me sitting in there for almost another hour (Oh, are you the patient... you weren't on the table!). I was then visited by a P.A. who quickly listened to my breathing and heart and shortly after saw her 'Partner' who to this day don't know if she was another P.A. or an actual doctor. She not only told me I didn't belong in the hospital, (with head tilted, pursed smirk and challenging gaze) but that I was abusing a system that was already under great stress and I was being unfair. Asked me if I was employed (obviously not since I've been suffering chronically with heart issues and a brain tumor for over 3 years now), and when told I was no longer able to work, and even the business I had started had home was on hiatus due to inability to function normally, her reply was, 'Well, maybe it's time look for a real job so you can find some insurance, besides, the only thing I'm seeing in front of me is anxiety... maybe you should take your pain meds.' In an E.R. why was my insurance status even reported to the doctor? And why did it have anything to do with her decision to treat me? I was sent home with no help what-so-ever and nearly died from lack of oxygen and low pulse the following evening! Went into a topor state where I could not breathe, could not move and could not speak... was like being in a waking coma. Only my husband physically pulling me from the bed and holding me in a position over the bed helped increase my pulse and eventually pulled me out of it... Thank God for fear driven responses! By the way, taking my pain meds as told to by the E.R. doctor helped to lower my system further. (I could tell you soo much more... more bad instructions given by triage doctor for example!)
No one had checked my running pulse at the hospital, instead trusting a pulse/ox meter reading that was taken the moment I walked in. It was recorded at falling below 40 on my next visit (which took me 3 days to summon the courage to return) and dipped repeatedly/consistently below 35 when I would lie down. Still, no one did any blood oxygen labs, just occasionally read my pulse/ox with a pulse/ox meter (that by the way, is inaccurate with cold hands, low pulse, bright rooms, nail polish... shall I go on. It would be nice, if they're going to completely rely on machines to treat us, then the least they can do is both use the correct machines, and use those machines correctly!) More infurriating... they never did any sort of blood oxygen blood test even though they put me on oxygen!
It turned out that the heart medication THEIR HOSPITAL had prescribed me 3 months earlier, against my wishes, against my warnings, had added to an already bad Hypoxemia I'd been suffering for years and was now getting quite severe. Even after all this (I had not yet realized myself that Hypoxemia was the issue) I was only admitted on the second visit after I begged them to watch my pulse! Their answer was to put me through a gluttony of heart tests over the next nearly 3 days (some have now done further damage... some damage which was done and complained about during the test, but all was ignored... they didn't even do a blood/ox test before a chemically induced stress test... even though one of the monitor visits showed the night before that my pulse oxygen level had suddenly dropped to 92... 'as long as it's above 90 you're fine!' which is such a lie! 88 is considered dire enough to be placed on oxygen (as long as it's witnessed by a doctor, of course!) After this insanity their resulting solution was to completely change my blood pressure meds and have me try new ones (that expressly warned against being mixed with pain meds!)...AT HOME ALONE! When calls were made to the Cardiologist and to the hospital, every one said 'You're fine... we've checked again (in the 30 seconds you were on hold) and you're fine. Go see your Primary. The second call to the Cardiologist resulted in my being told to skip the E.R. altogether (since I was obviously just a pain in the ### now!) and just visit an Urgent Care. The more you speak up the less you're heard.
Medicine is not my life, don't even want it for a hobby, so why am I having to find each problem as we go... why did they refuse to look at my legs (that were the beginning of this problem... after all clots happen in the legs as well, our circulatory system goes the whole route, not just from the waist up... and considering what happened in my left thigh during the stress test, it should have raised red flags! ...why did they refuse to look at the tumor to see if it was causing further problems, if it had grown, if it was pressing on something, after all mine is in the brain stem which definitely can cause breathing/heart/lung/life support issues. Why did the first cardiologist do no tests what-so-ever but still feel that he was well enough versed in my history to say I had fibromyalgia because I wasn't getting enough R.E.M. at night (I'd only not been sleeping for the last few months or so... the pain and other issues had come looooong before that!), he wasn't in my room even 60 seconds. Why did nurses keep playing guessing games about my symptoms instead of doing their job and keep record of them so they could be correlated with all those God-like machine results? (Symptom correlation is NOT being practiced at either hospitals OR in doctors' offices!) In fact, their guessing games directly added to the problem and added to the risk to my life at least twice, that I'm aware of!
Finally... their ability to completely ignore the fact that pain meds are prescribed by doctors and the resulting issues from said prescriptions (side effects, damage to the heart/lungs/liver/etc; addiction, etc;) are all directly related to THEIR own behaviour... yet as soon as they see opiates in a patients record they are free to ignore, judge, belittle, under/not treat, and flat out refuse to help.
My blood pressure is high because I'm suffering from Hypoxemia... (could be the pain meds, could be the tumor, could be my liver even... or any as of yet undiagnosed issue), I was going into symptoms reminiscent of 'anxiety' because my pulse was dropping so low... I can't eat because my heart can't take another task when it's this oxygen starved, I can't sleep (or even get rest when I do) because by body is starved of oxygen. My extremities are going weak and cold and parts of my body are turning blue because... I'm not getting oxygen or am unable to use what oxygen I am getting.
I now am at home, on my own, feeling as though I have NO WHERE to go for help... NO WHERE. Each night I watch my pulse fall, listen occasionally to even my heart flutter, sputter, stop, sputter and find its rhythm again. For this issue Xanax was prescribed by a Mercy Gilbert suggested Primary care Physician. So I wouldn't stress about dying, I guess? Xanax, also not good with pain pills! I have now taken myself off of all meds but a very low dose of pain meds (still doing best) and am still getting no help. Weeks have gone by and am still waiting for just basic tests to be done by my Primary. When mentioning to her assistant this week that my oxygen level had suddenly dropped to 82 after waking from a doze with the usual start, and the resulting attempt to move had thrown me into 'an attack' of trembling and weakness (etc) again... all that was said was, "oh, goodness!" At what point does the doctor get off their ### and meet you at the hospital and make sure you have the care you need? At what point does the hospital stand behind all their "We care' tripe? At what point does the medical proffesion stand behind their actions? At what point are we going to be forced to pay for this fiasco whether it helps or not?... Oops! forgot. We actually have the answer to that last question thanks to our dear President. This system is failing the American public... this hospital directly is failing its public... and the answer is to further prop it up? Mark my words, I will die... needlessly. I'm not even middle-aged... and I will die. No care or aid of any kind is forthcoming and only further games are being played at the doctors office (this is my second Primary doctor in 3 months... not to mention the specialists I've seen... all out of my own very poor pocket... and still no help). I'm left at home with a sense of "where the hell do I go?" "who do I call" "how in God's name do I fight back?" "how do I save my life before it's too late?"
Skip Mercy Gilbert (and Banner!) and fill in the blank as you'd like, because in the years I've lived I've not found one doctor that actually listened or gone out of their way to care let alone make an attempt to heal. This hospital, just like all others are run by drug companies and that's what they push... drugs. Drugs don't heal, they merely stifle symptoms so you can further ignore what is happening in your body.
The first doctor at Mercy Gilbert said to me "You seem to feel a bit, I don't know, jaded maybe, about the medical profession." Hah! Yeah... just a little. Any doctor reading this... and wanting to save a life... please... speak out, NOW!

Brought my son in extremely sick with mono: A one minute meeting with doctor (654 dollars) and she gave him an anti-nausea pill.
Out to the waiting room to wait to have blood drawn and then called back to a curtained room and told by a PA there is nothing they can do. It will have to run it's course. 3000 dollars billed to our insurance company.
Two days later I have him back to an Urgent care where the doctor actually gave him Prednisone and he was feeling much better in 12 hours.
I will never go back there again. Too bad as when they first opened they were great.

I would have to agree with all comments posted about Mercy Gilbert Hospital. My wife and I have had a horrible experience there yesterday. We have spend 3 hours waiting in ER and we couldn't even get registered. I would understand this if they were busy, but this was not the case last night. Most employees were busy eating and talking god knows about what, while most patients were waiting to be checked in. My wife is in her 3oth week of our first pregnancy and we were advised to visit emergency room just to check things out. Needless to say, after 3 hours with no attention we left. She was feeling better and next morning we went to see our doctor, thank god things were okay. We had planned to have our first baby in this hospital, but after last night's treatment, I will never step another foot in this "if you can call it" hospital. No wonder United Health Care is giving this hospital only 3 starts out of 5. Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale is where we will go from now on, I don't care if I have to drive 30 minutes to get there.

I would have to agree with the last comment. My husband was taken to Mercy Gilbert Hospital via ambulance February of 2007 with two bowel obstructions. The nurses all sat at their stations chit-chatting about what, I will never know. My husbands obstructions got so severe, he started to vomit his own fectal matter. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I again, went back to the nurses station to get help, and found one Doctor sitting there eating. I told the Doctor that my husband is very ill and that his obsruction was getting worse. My husband was going into septic shock. The Doctor continued to eat his crackers, so I had now choice but to grab the Doctor by his shirt and drag him over to my husband's bedside. At that point, the Doctor knew the serious nature of his illness.
My husband went through a long 5 hour laparotomy. At which point the surgeon, did indicate my husband had two bowel obstructions and it was life threatening. To make matters worse, during my husband's recovery a day later in his private hospital room. One of the nurses shot him up with Narcan. If anyone knows what Narcan is used for, it is to reverse all effects on a person who has overdosed. And it makes one urinate and have bowel movements, all bodily function go haywire. Thanks to my experience in working in a level 1 trauma hospital, I was not going to tolerate very poor patient care. I will admit, the security is pretty good. They even came looking for me. The nerve!

This reflects on the whole establishment. I will be passing through the area next month and need to see a physician in the area - my car won't be stopping at Mercy.