French Hospital has high heart surgery death rates

It is not just the “hospitalist” physicians, and it is not just what goes on in the OR. French Hospital, the last time I was admitted for orthopedic surgery, had MAJOR, MAJOR problems. In fact, I felt I was at such a danger being there that, while I should have been hospitalized 5 days, I begged for discharge after two-and-a-half days, and they discharged me.

Any poor outcomes of all the surgeons who use French may very well be because of French Hospital’s terrible patient care.

These were the problems:

*Patient rooms were dirty.

*Bathroom was not set up for patients who have undergone orthopedic surgery (this was in their orthopedic-surgery part of the hospital). Had I not had a prior similar surgery, I may very well have had a poor surgical outcome because the problem with the bathroom set-up was compounded for tall people.

*The hospital rooms were VERY crowded. There were three beds crammed into a room that was built for two beds. This is how crowded it was. An elderly woman in the bed next to me had been admitted for a repair of a very, very bad femoral fracture. For the kind of surgery I had, they wanted you as mobile as possible and as quickly as (supposedly safely) possible, so the first out-of-bed movement was usually sitting upright in a chair. My bed and the bed of the woman who had surgery for a very bad femoral fracture were so close that, the only place for a chair for me to sit in was between our beds, and the chair touched BOTH beds. I actually encouraged her to eat and helped her eat–she was so out of it because of pain medications and the hospital provided NO assistant to help feed her, even though I told nursing staff about the risk of aspiration (she was trying to eat laying flat on her back, and that is very dangerous because of the possibility of aspiration of the food into the lungs, especially when the patient is heavily sedated).

*HIPPA patient-confidentiality regulations? They didn’t even TRY. The beds were crammed so close together that there was absolutely no way to have a confidential conversation with your nurse, surgeon, family members, case manager, or anybody else.

*They showed very poor judgment in keeping patients as inpatients following surgery who were so frail that they required nearly 24/7 nursing staff care. It was impossible to sleep at night because of the constant upset coming from the patient (she was elderly and very confused). She should have been in a rehab unit or facility because the level of care she required post surgery was at too high of a level for nursing staff to provide, unless there was someone sitting by her side 24/7.

*The nurses who had night shifts slept on shift. I know this because I was awake all night because of the one patient who required constant nursing care, and nurses were in and out of the room many times of the night…..until after midnight. Then the ability to get a nurse if you needed one was very spotty and when they showed up, they clearly had just gotten up from sleeping. So, until a nurse could get up and get to the confused patient’s bedside, the other two patients in the room were up because of her crying out, confused, trying to get out of bed, defecating in her bed, etc.