TLDR;
- St. Mary’s Long Beach Dignity Health Hospital is nightmarish and awful
- Long Beach Memorial Hospital is the best hospital I’ve ever visited
The difference between my experiences at Long Beach Memorial Hospital and St. Mary’s Long Beach Dignity Health Hospital has been night and day.
I injured my knee and went into the ER at St. Mary’s Long Beach Hospital back in June 2018. I spent about ten hours in the ER waiting for help and finally had someone stitch it up partially and tell me I would probably get an infection and to come back later. I went home and the next day had to return with a skyrocketing fever and a major infection spreading up my leg. I was admitted to St. Mary’s Long Beach Hospital, but never was even able to see a doctor for a couple of days. The doctor’s Physician’s Assistant acted like I was a giant pain in her ass and she could not wait to get away. I was on all the strongest antibiotics for a couple of days before they decided to do surgery to clean it out and I still hadn’t seen the doctor despite repeated requests. They wheeled me into the operating room in St. Mary’s and the guy doing the surgery showed up two hours late and was different than the doctor I had been told was my doctor the whole time. I was extremely concerned, but didn’t have a choice since my knee needed work or the infection could continue spreading. The surgery did stop the infection. I went in for a follow up MRI and I think it was conducted by a sadist… he put my knee in a horrible position and told me I couldn’t move or get more pain medication for a half hour and if I did move I had to start over. I lay there moaning in the worst pain of my adult life for half an hour and by the end I was shuddering uncontrollably. I still didn’t see a doctor – the Physician’s Assistant just kept coming and looking at it then moving on after acting like I was a pest to her. I finally met the doctor after I’d gone home and then returned to get the stitches out. To add insult to injury, St. Mary’s Hospital is covered in 1984-eque signs falsely proclaiming how much they love and care for their patients. When I got home, the St. Mary’s billing department screwed up my bills over and over and it took dozens of calls with them and the insurance company to get things fixed. My St. Mary’s Long Beach Dignity Health Hospital was experience was pretty nightmarish. I would recommend no one go there.
The Long Beach Memorial Hospital experience was an amazing difference. My wife was pregnant with our twins and we went in for our routine checkup and she showed some early / light signs of preeclampsia. Long Beach Memorial Hospital admitted her within a few minutes for monitoring. We thought we would go home the next day, but at midnight Laurel’s water broke. I went out and told a nurse and within a few seconds she was tested and then moved to a labor and delivery room. At every stage, the doctors took time to come visit and explain everything and check her out. When she was finally ready for delivery, we were moved into an operating room that had over 20 doctors and nurses ready to go. There were 2 ObGyns, 5-7 nurses for Laurel, a full team of NICU people for each baby (1 doctor and 3 nurses), and an anesthesiologist and his assistant. All of the doctors were smart and professional and kind. At one point, a resident Ob Gyn had called for a C-section but the lead doctor knew we wanted to try for a natural birth and cancelled it and sat with us as Laurel worked through it for five hours. Laurel ended up having a life threatening condition called placenta accreta according to the forensic lab reports that resulted in her needing emergency surgery (hysterectomy) after the births. The lead doctor worked for a long time to try to save her uterus and called in the hospital’s department head for a second opinion before they finally switched over. Afterwards, the doctor came out and explained to us that even in many other US hospitals, the bleeding could have cost Laurel her life. As it was, she needed a couple of units of blood. Afterwards, both the baby and the obgyn doctors have been incredibly attentive to us. Every day the NICU doctors would spend half an hour with us explaining what was going on and what to watch for and how to emotionally handle this new experience. We even had an hour and a half meeting with our babies lead doctor and their social worker outside of the NICU in a conference room. The entire experience I have had with Long Beach Memorial Hospital has been very impressive.
If I or a loved one ever needs a hospital visit again (god forbid) we are definitely going to go to awesome Long Beach Memorial Hospital and NOT to the terrible St. Mary’s Dignity Health Long Beach Hospital.