4 years ago
My spouse was traveling for work over 4 hours from...
My spouse was traveling for work over 4 hours from home and had a kidney stone attack. Anmed was the closest ER he could safely reach. He was treated quickly and placed in a room I could only describe as grossly communal. Given it was flu season it was not a containment set up, so the chances were high of coming out with the flu if you didn't have it coming in. So here he is in a middle bed sandwiched between a seizing young girl and an elderly gentleman having private medical conversations. You could hear literally everything!! This is but a small problem, it got worse. While the staff was nice enough, they were certainly not attentive enough. He was told point blank that because he was not a SC resident, or wasn't a medicare/ medicaid recipient they could only "stabilize" him but not treat him(meaning pain management not actual removal of the stone that was completely blocking his kidney function). They admitted that they didn't really have the tools to perform the surgery either, so I knew we would at least have to go to Greeneville and try to get closer to home but the blatant statement of basically "we won't treat you" was alarming!! Meanwhile, I am trying to get to him as fast as I can! What if it was something that couldn't have waited? In the 4 hours it took me to reach him they gave him a bag of IV fluids, generic pain management, a basic and comprehensive blood panel, and a kidney stone confirming CT scan. He saw the doctor ONE time. The nurse administered meds 2-3 times. The higher number of nurse visits was because as I arrived to try to drive him home to go to our local ER to have him admitted for surgery, she gave him his "go home" meds to help him deal with the pain during the drive. The problem was she didn't have everything ready for another 1.5 hours so the med would have worn off half way home. I asked her to administer a different med to get us home, which took another 45 minutes. By the time we got home, had his labs redrawn and him admitted for surgery his kidney function had decline so poorly we were concerned about permanent damage. The kidney was beginning to fail. This was literally the extent of their services. A highly communal, military triage like bed. A bag of IV fluids and pain management which included 4 shots. A CT scan with reading. 1 doctor peep in and 2 blood tests. This NOT FOR PROFIT hospital billed my insurance $14,813! Over $9000 was for the "room" for a few hours!!! Not only that but as soon as everything cleared I called to set up a payment plan because the ER visit met my families ENTIRE YEAR'S deductible in January. I was told I had 90 days to pay the full amount due, set up an over $500/ month auto draw payment plan, or be turned over to collections if even $1 wasn't paid before 4 months was up! Moral of the story is, go elsewhere if you safely can. My husband couldn't safely reach Greenville on his own. I had no problem with rude staff or anything as minor as that. This place will NOT treat you if you have standard insurance and live out of state! What they will do is stabilize you so you have to pay twice for what should have been taken care of once. It is their policy that you either set up a ridiculously high payment plan, pay in full in 90 days with collections at 120 days if even $1 is left due, and the service was like being in a military triage line. While I am sure there were far more critical patients than my husband, they could have at least not botched his check out so we could leave their flu infested communal petri dish.