Posts Tagged ‘St. Elizabeth’s Hospital’

St. Elizabeth’s apparently faster at responding to complaints than treating patients

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

The letter I posted on my blog earlier today was mailed this morning.

My wife received a call from someone at St. Elizabeth’s at 3:15 today: “… I just wanted to let you know that we received your letter and are looking into it….”

My letter obviously didn’t make it through the mail from my house to St. Elizabeth’s in six hours, which means that they saw it on my blog.  A review of my blog’s access logs shows someone at the hospital visiting the page at 1:49pm, a little over three hours after I posted it.  Either someone who reads my blog knows someone at St. Elizabeth’s and forwarded a link to them, or someone at the hospital is actively monitoring the Web for postings about it.

I suppose this wouldn’t be terribly surprising — any large business that isn’t doing that nowadays is run by fools — but I do think it’s somewhat interesting.

I can’t resist the urge to point out that if St. Elizabeth’s has to choose between having enough people on staff to process test results in a timely fashion, and having someone on staff to monitor the Internet for postings about the hospital, I’d rather they choose the former than the latter.

St. Elizabeth’s Hospital (Boston) ER: wait 0 minutes to be seen, 9 days to be treated

Thursday, January 28th, 2010
January 26, 2010

John Holiver, President
St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center
736 Cambridge Street
Brighton, MA 02135

Dear Mr. Holiver,

My wife, A… Kamens, was treated in your emergency room (ER) early in the morning on Sunday, January 17.

The doctor who treated her told her to seek follow-up care with her primary care physician (PCP), Dr. C… L…. He said he would call Dr. L… that day, but my wife should wait until Tuesday to contact her, because by then all the test results would be available in my wife’s electronic record, where Dr. L… would be able to access them.

Not only did the ER doctor not call Dr. L… on Sunday as promised, he never called her at all.

Not only were my wife’s test results not available by Tuesday as promised, they were not available until January 26, nine days after my wife’s ER visit.

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