Dear Save Maimonides,
I have been sitting here in the Maimonides ER with my teenage daughter since 1 AM waiting for an ultrasound. It’s hard to believe that in the entire hospital there is only one person in the radiology department who can do an ultrasound and that we will be waiting 7 to 12 hours to be seen. This is not an isolated incident, either. We had the same thing happen six weeks ago, when we had to come in at 9 PM for an ultrasound and we were there until 8 AM the next morning. And when my wife gave birth here five months ago? There was ONE staff member for the entire maternity ward. Now you tell me – how can one person be expected to take care of all the women who just gave birth, while also taking care of an entire nursery of babies?
I am just one person, but over a period of five months, I had three separate horrible experiences at Maimonides, in two different departments. I can’t even begin to imagine how many other people have their own horror stories. Or how patients who need serious care are surviving here.
As someone who manages a large business, I understand the difficulties of staffing challenges, but even in this difficult environment, there are solutions to be found for those who are willing to look for them. Something has to change because Maimonides officials are forgetting that patient care, comfort and convenience are critical components of their business model and it is clear that they have zero regard for their patients.
At a time when the government is showering institutions like Maimonides with funding, it is insane that not only aren’t patients seeing improvements, they aren’t even getting basic care. Maimonides has two choices if they can’t come up with proper staffing – they can let people step in who can find solutions, or they can shut down, because it is very clear that patients who come here aren’t getting the treatment they deserve.
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22 Responses
That hospital has always been a place to go die! Went to their ER twice. Nothing major, but still needs help.
1st time was a pretty bad dislocation. Any idiot there could’ve fixed it, but after sitting there for seven hours, I rammed the damaged joint into the wall and popped it back in place myself!
2nd time I was bent over in pain. Now my pain tolerance is unusually high, pope in my own joints in remember, so this one had me doubling over. After 9 hours, I called my mom and explained to her what was happening. She’s a former nurse. Told me that it sounds like something is in my upper digestive and is irritating the tissue, causing pain. I stuck two fingers down my throat and went home 10 minutes later.
Not a single resident approached me during either one of those times!
Kenneth D. Gibbs needs to go! Unfortunately Kenneth D. Gibbs and neither the board of trustees care about Maimonides.
When the executive branch gets a raise of $10 million collectively, and the hospital loses $100 million that alone is mismanagement.
The hospital claims they are losing money due to the drop in reimbursements, and that the customers with private pay insurance are going to Manhattan. But that is the very reason that we need to turn this hospital around. If this hospital was a five-star hospital with
proper care, we wouldn’t be going to Manhattan.
The proposal of save Maimonides was to require each Board member to contribute or fundraise at least $2,000,000 over a two-year period – representing a
$64,000,000 capital infusion — which would have enabled the Hospital to hire countless nurses and other critical staff and to carry out much-needed improvements to its facilities – or otherwise replace Board members with new members who would be willing to make such commitments. Evidently, the Board Chair and management ignored their fiduciary duties and failed to even share these facts with the full Board to give a fully-informed and serious consideration to this approach for a hospital that has consistently been losing money and is in desperate need of discretionary funds.
Save Maimonides dream is for this hospital to be a hospital where community members don’t have to go to Manhattan.
Community members can walk on Shabbos to their parents, to their mother or father in the hospital, to the young baby that was just born in the hospital. Where we can work with all of our neighboring communities and rebuild what was once a great hospital in Brooklyn.
Isn’t healthcare in the US supposed to be subject to free market economics? So if you don’t like the service at Maimonadies just go to a different hospital.
I sat for 3 hours in the ER with a broken shoulder and no one even looked at me. I then just left and had my shoulder looked at by a competent Orthopedic doctor who referred me to a proper hospital and surgeon in Manhattan. In a way, I’m glad they ignored me. Had they taken me in, I’d have probably wound up losing all mobility in that shoulder…
I call Maimonides “Shomrei Hadas’ waiting room” Going there is knowing you will get subpar care. My mother was there for a routine older lady procedure. She woke up in the recovery room, and they took her to her room upstairs. When they transfered her to a proper bed, I wanted to help they said no… They made her comfortable. I came into the room, I thought she was bleeding from her head! It was in fact the pillow they put under back after the procedure,, these incompetent idiots put the bloody pillow under her head!
That same day my very close friend was there with her mom who was dying of the machla. They put her in a room with a lady with pneumonia. The pneumonia patient was coughing so hard, you could hear it down the hall. When we wanted to go into the room, the nurses on the floor insisted that us healthy visitors wear a mask, because the pneumonia was so catchy,, but this immunocompromised lady was ok to be in the same room with out a mask. Until I posted on Instagram Maimonides Mishugoyim hoiz had her in the same room. Ken Gibbs found out about my post, and she was moved to a private room! Ridiculous! I will walk to Connecticut by foot from brooklyn, before going into that hospital the way it is run today.
Kach:
There’s literally no GI problem for which making yourself vomit is a wise solution. Especially if you had some unknown object in your “upper digestive”. However, good work outsmarting those mean people at Maimonides.
Source: I’m a doctor.
Q: why would you wait around the third or second time? just go to a hospital in kentucky. it would be faster according to your story, at only 11 hours away. this story smells like burnt tuna.
Why didn’t you take an Uber to the city? Miamon.. is equal or better than any outer boro hospital all not great. No one on the campaign has any real hospital experience, as far as patient ratings as any frum doc will tell utreating frumme is very very hard, so we give low grades
We know Maimonides is a disaster, but that said, this letter doesn’t sound totally accurate.
Want more people do this sort sort of job, especially overnight? You’re going to have to pay them very well! This is what happens when you don’t value medical and nursing folks enough.
About a month ago, I too was rushed to the emergency room and had to wait in excruciating pain for over 8 hours. However, it was not at Maimonides Hospital. Rather, it was in a top 10 US Hospital in Philadelphia. And that Hospital is all well aware of it, have tried everything they can, and can’t do anything about it.
Staffing Shortages and an increase of postponed surgeries and sicklier patients having longer Hospital stays are part of the causes. This Philadelphia Hospital has no open beds (despite adding a new building and new wing) and therefore cannot take patients from the (new) 40 bed Emergency holding department. And as a result, cannot see patients entering the emergency triage area any faster.
So, it isn’t (just) Maimonides. It’s an issue in Hospitals throughout the USA. And even the best Hospitals are struggling with this.
I had a similar story. I needed an ultrasound and had to wait overnight for a checkup that took literally minutes. Was sitting and waiting on a chair the entire night. Horrible place.
So all of you go voice your complaints at the TownHall meeting @A.Chaya. If you’re in BP or FB, it’s a no-brainer as this is your backyard.
H.s & paricular ER has been in steady decline in America over the past 3 decades with the drive for profits over care. COVID and backward-loopsided government & pharma insentives accelerated this in the past 3 years, not to mention the mass exodus of HCWs due to stress & jab mandates.
The ONLY government insentives should be based on LESS time for:
1. Admitance
2. Discharge after (patient signed) healing resolution
Dear Save Maimonides,
As a patient advocate and having been in the field for many years I am grateful that someone is stepping up to the plate and doing something. I do have to say , in defense of Maimonides, that this hospital is a lot more user friendly to the community it services and has been for many years. You at least have whom to call and ask for help like the wonderful Fleischer family and countless others.
Try getting to speak to someone at NYU in Manhattan. Its entirely impossible !!
If we want to compare, NYU wins the medal of ranking the lowest on quality, compassion and community service!! It is a death trap!
It is unfortunate that our state of quality medical care in NY has gotten to a point of no return. Our system is broken and our ONLY choice is to open our OWN hospitals. Look back at the history of NY hospitals. From Beth Isreal to Mt Sinia and most others were established by Bikur Cholim activists in times of great need when care for our own Jewish patients or Jewish doctors were neglected in NYC. Time to do more than campaigns to a broken system!! TIME TO BUILD A NEW HOSPITAL with the values of the Torah!!
I cant believe I forgot to talk about my sister’s C-section in Maimo… the anesthesiologist put the nasal canula in her MOUTH! She was shocked, but he said that that it was good, and she was at the end of a long and arduous labor that was ending in a c section. She had no Koach to argue.. at one point, her heart monitor flat lined. So her husband asked why. The ob was working on the c section and didnt notice.. the anesthesiologist was PLAYING ON HIS PHONE!!! Anyhow, when she went to the office to ask for her birth report, mysteriously it disappeared!
On a different story, a sister of mine had a c section in that crazy place. It was Friday night, and I was leaving her. She asked me to tell the nurse that if she walks past the room she should peak in because my sister did not want to use the buzzer. The black nurse who was obviously not Jewish, told me “More religious women then your sister use the buzzer, she can use it too!”
NO My family will not use shomrei hadas’ waiting room for any more babies,,, don’t worry!
Maybe Dov Hikind can sit in front of the entrance with a bullhorn screaming about the Holocaust or something.
@ BaisIsThePlace
Not the point of my post, but as a “doctor”, I’m sure you feel ENTITLED to TEACH silly ol’ me a “lesson”!
Next time, try READING the entire post and UNDERSTANDING what’s being said!
My point was, since you OBVIOUSLY MISSED IT, NOT A SINGLE RESIDENT EVER APPROACHED ME!
You “doctors” think you’re better than everyone else because you have a piece of paper on your wall. Try this on-
Only SOME of those calling themselves doctors, are actually deserving of the title. The rest are in it for the money!
Newflash: People who aren’t actively dying in the ER aren’t seen right away! It’s like no one gets how a hospital functions…
In no hospital is a maternity nurse also a neonatal nurse. Either she was taking care of the postpartum women or she was taking care of the babies, but one nurse was not doing both. It just doesn’t work that way.
I am not trying to discredit this rant, but it sounds wholly implausible.
For a maternity ward that is notorious for being overcrowded to the point where you hear stories of people delivering in the hallway, saying there was only one nurse on the ward sounds absolutely hyperbolic.
While I’m not familiar with much of what’s going on there, if regime change is necessary I am all for it.
But a base accusation like this will only serve to throw mud on the face of those campaigning for such a change.
Shmiras Haloshon, on our hospital the nurses do both.
Take care or mother’s and their babies.
Now that most hospitals don’t have nurseries that’s how it works
49 states have looser restrictions and laws allowing them to build more or better hospitals. In some of those states, I even see digital billboards advertising the current ER wait times….and then there’s UC’s. 49 states. This is more systematic than just an entitiled CEO.