Hospitals: ER Customer Service

Who likes hospitals? Well I guess Doctor and Nurses come to mind plus all those administrators who huddle to figure how to justify charging ten dollars for one Tylenol. For the rest of us (patients and visitors) it is often traumatic and even devastating. A recent trip to the Emergency Room at a hospital in New Brunswick NJ had the potential of doom but fortunately all ended well.

My daughter had suffered an asthma attack and the doctors said she should be observed for about three hours. She began to relax and eventually fell asleep so I looked around for someone to talk too.

Communication is tiresome as nurses are too busy to talk and doctors spend more time struggling with paper work than consulting with patients. I settle down to reading dog-eared magazines that hold a million infectious germs and eating in a cafeteria that is not as clean as you would think for a place of cure. I did see one very friendly person who talked my ear off; the one gathering my insurance information.

Exhausting the magazine supply I began to search for more words and found them on a notice hung on the wall. It was a document outlining the rights of the patient. Problem was that it was about seven foot from the ground. For the average size person a step stool would be required and not only that the font was a Times New Roman size two making it almost impossible to read. It must be a hospital rule to throw you off. Not to worry there are bound to be pamphlets advising me of my rights and I found them. The cover on the first one said Spanish and the inside was in Spanish. Next to those were the English ones because the words were English on the front. However when I opened it up all the contents were in Spanish. I tried to point the error out to a nurse but as I approached she hastily walked in the other direction, clip board in hand.

I got up and began to wander. You see a lot of wandering souls in hospitals; walking endless corridors with vacant looks. Soon I'm integrated as part of regular hospital movement.

Ok it seems like I'm complaining but I'm not. Doctors and nurses have my sincere gratitude and deepest admiration for they deal with human wreckage on a daily basis. The sudden influx of ER patients and their kin can only be confrontational in their hectic environment. Maybe administrators sense a captive audience and are complacent about ER customer service. But ER customer service is attainable; just ask the insurance collector.