Complaint Review: Geisinger Medical Center

I am a nurse at another major hospital. when I moved into Geisinger country- I went there emergently when I could not breath, and was eventually diagnosed with a heart problem. My experience in the emergency room was not only frightening, but disappointing and disillusioned me. The nursing care was horrible, I did not see the same nurse twice, I did not know who was a nurse, who was a tech, who was a janitor.

I was in severe pain, couldn't breath, vomiting and none of that is documented in my record, because nobody answered my call bell- they just turned it off. When eventually they decided they were going to discharge me, I was literally escorted to the door, still unable to breath, with a pain rating of 9 and asking for pain medication. I asked to see the doctor, and I was told by the nurse to get into the wheelchair, was given 3 advil and a coke at the ER door and escorted out.

I had no ride home, couldn't walk because of the pain and difficulty breathing, and eventually my daughter was able to come and pick me up. In the meantime I sat on the pavement in the cold.... I called the ER director the next day and all she gave me was a bunch of excuses. I told her team nursing went away years ago, especially in an emergency department, and that the care I got was a disgrace. She could not have cared less. Not at all.

I ended up with thousands of dollars of bills that I absolutely refused to pay because I knew they were not billing my insurance company properly. Because I know insurance, I fought them tooth and nail, despite their multiple calls asking me for money. Finally, after months of fighting...I owed $50....my ER visit co-pay which I expected. NEVER pay these people money if you are not sure you owe it.

Geisinger is a completely hospitalist based hospital, which means all the physicians are employees of the hospital. This leads to absolute mediocrity. They don't care, they don't have to, they get paid anyway. The nurses were horrible, non caring, poor knowledge base, no advocacy. The next night I ended up in my hospital via ambulance for 5 days and was treated properly with the correct medications and physicians. This hospital is too big for it's britches, has absolutely no compassion, does not care about it's patients and is horribly run. To call all it's physician offices "clinic's has such negative connotations. The physicians are non present. My plan was to move to this area and work at Geisinger. I will never work for this disgrace of a hospital, ever. Stay away, there are much better hospitals.