Let's Rate Emergency Rooms (Pittsburgh, Greensburg: insurance, home, living)

[Hopes]

I've been to many of Pittsburgh's metro area emergency rooms throughout my life for myself and various immediate and extended family members.

They're all different! The way patients are managed seems to stay consistent throughout the years too.

I'm always amazed that people go to the terrible emergency rooms.

I'm equally amazed when I hear someone has a negative opinion of a specific hospital that has consistently provided excellent emergency care.

I've never understood why some hospitals don't strive to provide an excellent patient experience in the emergency room.

Afterall, the emergency room is often a potential patient's first impression.

I thought it would be interesting to share our experiences in the various emergency rooms we've been to.

I'll start with the two hospitals that are closest to my home: St. Margarets and Passavant.

(My worst experiences have been West Penn and Allegheny General, but I'll get to those eventually.)

[Hopes]

UPMC St Margarets

This hospital is appealing for routine surgeries because all of the rooms are private, but the ER misses the mark for first impressions.

The key problem is that the main area isn't staffed in the middle of the night. (As a result, this review is for the middle of the night experience.) There isn't a living sole to be seen when you walk into the waiting room area. There is no receptionist. The registration desks and triage rooms are often empty. There just a counter where you fill out a piece of paper and leave it there for someone to eventually wander out to get it.

(This isn't the only area hospital like this. It's a pet peeve of mine. A person could be dying in the waiting room and nobody would know it. I've seen some terrible things happen to people who were waiting with nobody there to see the urgency of their situation. Often family members and other patients are running back into the ER for help. Sometimes they can't get back into th ER because the door only opens from the inside or with a buzzer and they are banging on the door for help.)

Once someone picks up your paper, everything gains momentum slowly. The triage nurse takes a while to appear (where they taking a nap, having lunch, smoking a cigarrette?) and sometimes there's a disconnect waiting for registration.

Once you're taken back into a room (all private), St. Margarets provides decent care 90% of the time. (I've only had a couple bad experiences throughout my life with weird doctors or whatever.) The ER staff is competent, friendly and seems to really like their jobs. You'll see a nurse and a nurse practioner within a very reasonable period of time and the nurse practitioner will begin relevant treatment immediately and send you off to relevant tests rather efficiently. Often you get stuck in the x-ray department (again, they must be sleeping!) as if someone forgot you.

Depending on the night, there might be a lag before seeing a doctor. That's hit or miss at St. Margarets. Some doctors are efficient---others take their good old time if you're not literally dying. (It's not like they're busy elsewhere. You can see them standing around, not doing anything, if you happen to be in the halls because you're a relative of a patient.)

[greg42]

Well, my only experience with a real ER in town is West Penn, and I wasn't the patient. Yet it seemed fine. Things were moving quickly, the room was private and had TV, and I can't figure out what was wrong with it. This was just a few months ago, keep in mind. I think remarks like this need to be qualified with when the most recent experience was. This isn't to say that West Penn is the end-all place, obviously, but this plus my other experiences there have been good. You do get students tagging along at West Penn. I would think you'd also get them at Presby and many other places. This was during the day on a weekday, went in there at late morning.

I can contrast this with my experience at South Shore Hospital in suburban Boston. There I was the patient. A number of things were less appealing there including lack of TV (alright, silly, but still it can be a nice distraction; at least the wifi worked for my iPhone), some general lack of concern for privacy, stupid logistics like having to be wheeled to x-ray even though I could have walked there in 30 seconds (the wait to go back to my ER room was something like 15-20 minutes, terrible; at West Penn they used a portable chest x-ray machine instead). I never saw an actual doctor either, despite having what may have been (probably won't ever know for sure) a potentially life-threatening condition. I don't know if this was policy or just Thanksgiving weekend (it was Saturday morning about 8am). 7 hours there with most of it waiting on not sure what. I know labs take time, but still.

When I had a less serious problem locally a couple years ago, I went to MedExpress. They are fantastic. If you have a sorta, kinda emergency, I would highly recommend. (Note, my one experience is a couple years ago at the Mars location, but I know others who have been more recently at different locations and were also most pleased.) This is not like an in-store clinic at CVS or such. They have a doctor on duty, they can do x-ray and some lab, stitches, etc. I had cut open my knee pretty bad and ended up needing stitches. All was taken care of in the place and quickly. The follow up visit for removing the stitches was covered as part of the process. Even the paperwork seemed less onerous. Both times it felt weird to walk straight out not having to sign anything additional at the end, but it was refreshing. Of course, they're not open 24/7 like a hospital ER.

[Hopes]

UPMC Passavant

By far, this is my favorite emergency room in the North Hills. I have only had to wait during extremely busy periods in the daytime perhaps a few times in my life. Most of my experiences have been amazingly quick and strangely enjoyable. These people love their jobs! I have never seen so many happy, friendly, outgoing people anywhere. (There must be something in the water!)

When you arrive, the triage room has a window---you literally see the triage nurse and technician as soon as you enter the ER even if it's the middle of the night. You are asked into the triage room as soon as you arrive at the window unless there is already a patient in triage. From triage, you are taken diectly back to a room (all of which are private except one room that has four beds and they all have televisions with cable.) You completely skip registration most of the time; registration often comes to your room. Without fail, the nurse stops in within minutes with the nurse pracitioner immediately following. Sometimes you get both at once. The nurse pracitioner begins relevant treatments and tests, and the doctor breezes in very quickly.

Discharge is often efficient, but sometimes you have to wait quite a while if the doctor discharging you is busy with a life threatening emergency.

I was in Passavant's emergency room within the past few weeks. I was in and out within 30 minutes.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by greg42

This was just a few months ago, keep in mind. I think remarks like this need to be qualified with when the most recent experience was.

My experiences with all four hospitals mentioned in my first post have been within the past year. I was trying out West Penn and AGH because I wanted to see what they were like these days. I think it's equally important to indicate the time of day. MOST of my emergency room experiences have been in the middle of the night.

Originally Posted by greg42

When I had a less serious problem locally a couple years ago, I went to MedExpress. They are fantastic. If you have a sorta, kinda emergency, I would highly recommend. This is not like an in-store clinic at CVS or such. They have a doctor on duty, they can do x-ray and some lab, stitches, etc. I had cut open my knee pretty bad and ended up needing stitches. All was taken care of in the place and quickly. The follow up visit for removing the stitches was covered as part of the process. Even the paperwork seemed less onerous. Both times it felt weird to walk straight out not having to sign anything additional at the end, but it was refreshing. Of course, they're not open 24/7 like a hospital ER.

I've tried MedExpress three times in the past six months (twice for a child and once for me.) It's great for many minor issues---like flu, infections, stitches. Unfortunately, they almost killed me by not treating my severe allergic reaction aggressively. They gave me a minor steroid, and I ended up in the emergency room with barely time to spare. I'll still go to them for the easy stuff though. There's many things they won't treat so sometimes it's a waste of time and copay. I recommend calling ahead to ask if they treat a specific problem.

[neurodistortion]

I'm from Greensburg, so we have Excela Westmoreland, which is a pretty nice hospital, even the emergency room doesn't have much of a long wait. For the visitors, they even have free soft drinks and snacks if you're ever having a craving.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by neurodistortion

I'm from Greensburg, so we have Excela Westmoreland, which is a pretty nice hospital, even the emergency room doesn't have much of a long wait. For the visitors, they even have free soft drinks and snacks if you're ever having a craving.

I love the free drinks and snacks! I've never heard of that!

[Tallysmom]

Since my experiences are from out here, I won't name hospitals, but what I've found is that places that take the uninsured are not run well. They are over run by people misusing the emergency room, as they don't have regular doctors, and underfunded as a result.

But when my husband was having odd chest pains, our doctor called ahead to the hospital as I drove him there (probably quicker than an ambulance, considering calling 911 here involves a 15 minute WAIT). He walked in, was greeted by name, paperwork half finished awaiting a signature and was put into a room and hooked up to a heart monitor by the time I parked the car and walked into the e-waiting room. That's where I saw all the signs saying basically if you don't have insurance they will not help you.

He was there throughout the day, they were running tests, and running more tests and at one point I walked out into the nerve center and saw busy happy staff doing their jobs....

And at the end of it all, he was sent home with a wrong diagnosis and all we paid for nearly 10K worth of stuff was 100 bucks.

I can't fault the diagnosis. His family has a history of befuddling doctors. His dad used to bleed internally and lose weight every couple of years for no reason anyone could tell. Lived to be one week shy of 85. Sort of wondered if he did something to get some peace and quiet from the family!

And this is the second time Brent has had something that they can't figure out what's going on....

[TechieTransplant]

Originally Posted by Hopes

UPMC St Margarets

Almost two years ago, on a Saturday night, we ate at La Capella cafe in Waterworks Plaza. I went to work Sunday, and my wife had complained of a burning sensation in the middle of her chest, but she said it seemed to subside and we didn't worry about it. Monday came around, and it was so bad she came home from work, and called me home from work. I made my way from the South Hills. We were on our way to St Margarets and got there at 4:30. She was worse than doubled over with pain. I was livid; we got back to see the triage nurse fairly quickly, but we never saw a doctor until 9:30pm in the evening. On a Monday. At one point, I told her I was going to go get the car and take her to the Waterworks parking lot and call an ambulance to get her seen quicker. Oddly enough, in talking with a nurse couple who worked at another UPMC facility, it seems as though that probably would have worked.

[Joshbarblahblah]

When I had H1N1, the emergency room attendant at West Penn was very rude. (Of course, the G20 was going on at the time and the protesters from Friendship park decided to all start marching down the street in front of the ER...so perhaps he was stressed?)