Good/Bad Experience at Mt. Sinai Hospital

Hi all-

I'm a journalism student at Columbia and I've been reporting on Astoria for the past couple months, and I'm hoping one of you out there can help me with my lastest article.

I'm doing a follow up on the state of the Mt. Sinai Queens hospital after it received $1 million back in March to aid the influx of patients it received from the closing of St. John's Queens Hospital in Elmhurst and Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica.

A lot of people think this hospital is a mess (on yelp) and with the additional of patients it received because of the swine flu outbreak and the closing of the other 2 hospitals, it seems to have only gotten worse, or so it appears.

If you or anyone you know has gone there and had a bad or good experience and wouldn't mind speaking about it, can you please reach out to me? I promise I'll be nice and I'll buy you, or them, a coffee ;)

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ran Craycraft on July 27, 2009 at 11:59am: Fortunately, I haven't had any experiences with Mt. Sinai, but I'm sure someone on here has. Anyone?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Illimanjaro on July 27, 2009 at 12:04pm: My roommate had something wrong with his legs about a year and a half ago. They were swollen with welts and he couldn't walk. I brought him to the emergency room. They took him in and kept him there for 5-6 days. In that time he said he saw maybe 9 different doctors (and basically had to tell them all the same thing) and, here's the kicker, they never were able to diagnosed him in that time. Since my roommate didn't have health insurance, he checked himself out. He got better during his stay there but we can't truly say we know why that is. But he does have about $15000 in hospital bills for the experience, which seems like a lot for not even getting to know what was wrong with him.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Illimanjaro on July 27, 2009 at 12:06pm: Also,
The guitarist of illimanjaro went to the emergency room for something with his finger. He checked in and waited about an hour and a half in a seemingly empty waiting room. Finally he went up to the desk and asked what was going on. After that, he was taken in almost immediately. Seems like they had just plumb forgotten about him.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Melissa Kondak on July 27, 2009 at 8:51pm: Thank you SO much for your info on this subject. Would you mind if I asked you some more questions and quoted you in my article? I think you have 2 very solid stories I'd like to use to frame my article.

Thank you so much in advance!

Melissa; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Illimanjaro on July 27, 2009 at 9:58pm: sure I have no problem with that, although you'd probably be better off talking to the people who actually experienced it. I can put you in touch with them as well. Send us a message here at WLA with your contact info and when/where you would want to meet up.
Liam; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Anti on July 28, 2009 at 8:48am: I recently admitted myself to MSHQ's Emergency room 2 months ago for a Skateboarding accident. I checked myself in at around 9pm on a Sunday in late April. This is during the big Swine Flu pandemic. There were a few people in the waiting room wearing medical masks but for the most, just somber looks from a long wait. All I wanted was to get X-rayed to make sure I didn't fracture my femur.
I breezed through administration since this wasn't the first Emergency room visit I've had this year at this hospital. The Amin. assistant was very 'in tuned' with my injury and saw that I was in agonizing pain so it wasn't a very long wait until I saw the Triage nurse for the basic "vitals". The Triage nurse realized that I couldn't sit comfortably so she immediate assigned me a mobile bed right outside her office to wait, and waited I did.
If it wasn't for the door security who worked that night keeping my mind and mouth moving, I don't think my experience would of been pleasant. I had waited over 3 hours before an X-ray technician saw me and took some shots of my leg. It took another 2 hours for an intern doctor to come see me with his explanation that there wasn't any fractures but explained to me that that doesn't mean I had damaged muscles. He suggested that I consult a sports rehabilitation doctor to see if there was any permanent muscle/tendon damaged done. That's all I really needed to hear and off I went with new crutches.
The overall experience wasn't good nor was it bad because I've been to a few different ER's in my lifetime. I would rather go through MSHQ's emergency room any day over Elmhurst's ER (let's see those Yelpers try Elmhurst and then compare their experience!).
I'm not sure where the $1 million is going to be spent but what I do know for a fact is that they are currently renovating their Central processing department and their 1st floor Radiology dept. Hopefully this will help facilitate patients faster.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ran Craycraft on July 28, 2009 at 8:58am: Youch! I'm w/ you, Anti. Have never been to MSHQ, but had my mind blown at ElmHURTS' after seeing several blood spatters on the floor and wall, insane wait times (6hrs+), and cops standing around flirting with receptionists.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Melissa Kondak on July 28, 2009 at 12:30pm: Hi Anti-

Thanks so much for your story! Are you available to chat anytime tomorrow? I'm pretty flexible so whatever works for you I will try my best to accommodate.

If you're not free to meet I'm down to chat on the phone or email questions, so whatever works best for you works for me.

Thank you so much!

Melissa; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Anti on July 28, 2009 at 12:51pm: add me as a friend...and from there you can write me directly and ask all the questions you like.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jen Rock on July 28, 2009 at 12:53pm: I did a bike marathon with bronchitis so I had to go in to the emergency room because I was having a really hard time with the illness afterward. I went during a week day, around noon, and didn't seem to wait too too long (although I was a bit out of it!). The doctors seemed decent, and while it took a while, they did give me a chest x-ray, then prescribed me heavy drugs to kick out the illness. The woman who checked me out was especially kind, and offered me a referral to what she said was a "better" doctor than the referral the emergency room doctors gave me for a check up in two weeks.

The trouble came when I was getting billed. They kept sending me bills that said my health insurance was not going to cover a portion of my bill and I had to pay out more than the $50 emergency room fee. I was lucky in that I had Oxford health insurance, which told me to call them if I ever received letters like that. I received two of those letters, Oxford readjusted and payed out, but then Mt. Sinai sent me a third demanding yet another $161.00. That may not seem like much but I'm unemployed and dished out $50, and this took place last August, and I was still receiving these collection letters this summer. This bill, it turns out, was not even submitted to my health insurance, so Oxford could not help me until the hospital submitted. I called billing, they said they'd take care of it, but they didn't, and I got a second notice. I walked down to the hospital, to the billing department, and demanded they resubmit to my health insurance. The woman there was completely confused and did not understand why the letter said my health insurance had already payed their part (apparently she is not aware that this kind of scamming is commonplace in hospitals, or she's just a good liar). In any event, this whole financial idiocy is so messed up its made me never want to go to that hospital again.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Anti on July 28, 2009 at 1:07pm: This happened to me also...and from the same hospital. I had gotten one bill from the hospital itself and one from the intern doctor who spent 10 minutes with me out of the 6 hours I was there ($161 for 10 minutes of his time...but not only that, that intern doctor was just relaying what the resident doctor told him to tell me so not only did I get billed for the intern doctor, but also got billed from the resident doctor! now that is BS (over $300 from the resident Dr.). None of the bills were paid by my insurance and I have decent insurance too (Cigna).
it's good to hear that I wasn't the only one who was getting 'jacked' and that someone had figured it out. (not that I want anyone else to experience the same). I haven't made any attempts to go directly to the hospital's account window yet, but after reading this, I think I will. Thanks Jen!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jen Rock on July 28, 2009 at 1:14pm: I wouldn't have been so confident that I was in the right if I hadn't had friends who warned me that hospitals do this commonly - So far I have been billed for the doctor who saw me, the x-ray doctor, and the hospital visit, separately! And each of these bills claimed my health insurance had already paid their portion and everything was on me, that is NOT true and I'm pretty disgusted how scummy these hospitals run.; ▶ Reply to This