Health Care GREED

This post is about my family's experiences with one of my local hospitals in Schenectady, St. Claire's. Though it was once a good hospital, it has gone to crap in a matter of a few years.

Last September, my mother passed away from a stroke. It was the last of many strokes. The first stroke took a while to find. She had unexplained vision changes, and went to St. Claire's for it several times. On the final time, they decided to do a CAT scan. They finally realized it was a stroke, and that she had several of them previously, all relatively minor. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a sudden change in vision is a classic sign of a stroke, but, then again, I do not have a medical degree and earn six figures with it. They should have run a CAT scan the first time, and the fact that they did not do it was completely negligent on their part.

Shortly after my mother passed, my sister had a baby. She has always had troubled pregnancies that result in bed rest. In this case, the placenta ripped away from the wall of the uterus, as I understand. This left my sister bleeding profusely. Upon arriving at St. Claire's, much to her horror, they did not have a doctor available to treat her condition and perform the c-section. While she lay bleeding, they tried to track down their on-call doctors. None of their doctors would answer, so they essentially pulled out a phone book and started dialing unaffiliated, random doctors. It took a while for him to show up, and he walked in screaming at the nurses. He had expected, understandably, that my sister would be prepped for the c-section and that they would have the correct equipment in the room. They failed on both accounts, and my sister had to wait even longer for them to get everything set up. Minute by minute she crept closer to death. Fortunately, she and the baby are now healthy and happy, thanks to the work of the good doctor.

If that were no bad enough, because the baby was slightly premature, they decided to transfer the baby to the NICU at nearby Bellvue hospital. They, however, told my sister that they could not transfer her, because they did not have that type of agreement with Bellvue. My other sister watched over the baby, and happened to find out that that was a total lie from the nurses at Bellvue. Upon raising hell, the baby and mother were reunited. St. Claire's simply wanted the profit from the c-section recovery in their greedy hands.

Finally, it is time for my father's story. Due to declining health and a limited income, he recently moved in with me so that I could help him out. Thursday morning, he woke up with a severe loss of vision. He could not even see my greyhound atlas, as he was licking my father's face. Of course, I knew immediately that there was a possibility that he had a stroke. Unfortunately, we happen to live across the street from St. Claire's. Panicked, and with the knowledge that every minute can count in a stroke, we went across the street. I told them what was going on, and that a stroke was one of my suspicions. They did the standard triage regiment, said they would order a CAT scan, and then did some eye tests. After a few minutes the doctor came back, and said that my father should go to an eye specialist in nearby Latham.

The specialist said that the problem was due to cataracts. My father was warned a year ago that cataracts were starting to form, but they take several years to cause that kind of blindness, and it does not happen overnight. Skeptical, my sister tried to convince my father to go to Ellis, another local hospital that is better with strokes, immediately. He was very tired, however, and refused. After listening him describe his problems further, I managed to convince him to go today. As we suspected, it was a stroke.

Why had St. Claire's ignored it? My father owed them 16,000 from a previous visit, where they ran numerous expensive tests on him, and could not find anything at all wrong with him, except for high blood pressure. He walked out with a prescription to treat high blood pressure.

I know that they knew it was a stroke, they just did not want to get stuck with the bill. Unfortunately for them, my father will be getting Medicaid soon, which pays retroactively 3 months upon sign up. Then there is the eye doctor who already scheduled the removal of the "cataracts."

So, two parents and four children. This hospital has managed to make decisions that could have killed three out of the six of us, just in the last two years. Try to tell me that the health care system is not broken... It is ALL about profit. New fact, 8 dollars a day to watch TV in your room, with less than 20 channels. That is about 240 a month, and I pay about 70 for hundreds of channels. If you do not want to stare at the walls for hours upon hours, you pay through the nose.

This hospital is dealing with life or death, and it is likely to deal out death. Stay away from St. Claire's in Schenectady.