The Queen's Medical Center oncology — Attraction in Honolulu

This was the worst experience I’ve ever had with any emergency room ever! I go in at 7:30 am I have a severe cough and feel like I’ve coughed so hard I broke a rib or herniated myself. Severe pain on my right side and can barely breathe. When I get there I’m asked what’s wrong and I explain what’s going on. Get my temp checked and my blood pressure taken. It’s extremely high for me 165/110 this has me worried and I get ushered to the waiting room to wait. Then about 30 minutes later I’m issued into a small room where I’m given a Covid test where they shove a white stick up my nose so hard and I feel like he’s trying to stir my brain. No tissues until this maniac throws me some. I’m hacking and coughing. Then two nurses come in and give me a j hook to take blood they take there blood and then give me something for pain and a pill not sure what it was and then 2 seconds later another nurse comes in and sticks me again for another blood sample the j hook is still in my hand and she could have taken blood from the same place but no I guess the blood is different in my upper arm. I’m then escorted back out to the waiting room. 30 minutes go by and I’m taken to get a set of XRays the guy that took me was ok asked if I needed a wheelchair I said no I’m better upright than sitting. The X-ray tech was nice and was the first person that treated me like I was a human being. After the X-rays I was taken BACK TO THE WAITING ROOM!!! Where in about 10 minutes the same guy that escorted me to Xray came out and told me and the whole waiting room I had COVID and was escorted outside to the front of the waiting room. Where I sat thinking I had Covid and bronchitis or pneumonia and this what was going to kill me. I’m panicking thinking I’ve probably given Covid to my family that is a 4 generation family from 2 to 89 . I’m sitting out there trying to make plans for where in going to quarantine alone. I’m basically in tears When out comes this guy that escorted me to X-ray and told me and the rest of the waiting room I have Covid . And says guess what you don’t have Covid it was someone else’s test that was positive yours is negative. April fools!!! I didn’t find the funny. I was relieved of course but also still upset and angry now. Im ushered back to the waiting room thinking im finally going to be taken back and treated. Nope plopped me back in the waiting room. Where I sat for another hour. While the whole waiting room is giving me a wide berth cause they all still think I have Covid. So I go back outside because they all still think I have Covid nobody told them I don’t. And I don’t wanna have a problem with anyone in the waiting room. I’m sitting outside about 10 am and I see the last of the people that were in the waiting area have been taken back and this new group has no idea about the whole Covid situation so I head back inside. A nurse calls my name I get up and she says just stay seated. I say ok. She says I’m here to do an ekg so I start getting up thinking I’m to follow her. She says sit down and lift up your shirt. I’m thinking your going to this to me in front of the whole waiting room??? I sigh and lift up my shirt showing off 314 lbs of dad bod. And she slaps me like 10 time with stickers and hooks up the ekg machine right there in the waiting room. Making me extremely self conscious and I start coughing again. She looks at the machine says good enough and rips the wires off me. And walks away. About 30 minutes later. I’m told my X-rays aren’t back yet. I know this is a lie cause I’ve already seen them on my chart. And I can see from the X-ray that I don’t seem to have a broken rib anywhere and that the hernia is probably what happens so I’m expecting to be taken to do a ct scan. And then 30 minutes after this the doctor comes out to the waiting room says I don’t seem to have a broken rib but it’s probably just fractured and he’snsending me home to get better. I said when about the cough that was the cause of all this??? Oh yeah I’m sending you home with some meds and a pain med. don’t go to queens...

Wow. My mind is blown and I don't really even know where to begin. I am a Caucasian 43 year old woman with Perianal-Fistulizing Chrohn's Disease, Hashimoto's disease, Polycystic-Ovarian syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and severe osteo-arthritic damage of the spine and shoulder. On Tuesday, March 5, 2019, I was seen by my PCP doctor in Kailua for significant lower back pain. My PCP doctor was concerned that I may have extensive damage to the spine. She wanted me to go to the ER immediately and get a MRI on my lower back. I was seen and treated promptly by Queens doctors and was diagnosed with a herniated disc. I was admitted to the hospital room and given excellent care. I left feeling 100% better. Unfortunately on Sunday, March 10th, the pain from the herniated disc returned ten-fold and I promptly returned to Queens once again for treatment. This time however, was vastly different than the time before. Perhaps, because I was unkempt and in PJs this time around, I was treated horribly. A brand new doctor at Queens came into my room, without examining me, and proceeded to be incredibly rude and condescending to me. He also stated, " you don't have a herniated disc" EXCUSE ME!!! YOUR DOCTORS DIAGNOSED ME!!! He then said, "we don't treat people for chronic pain, only acute pain, .breaks and things that can be fixed" and I replied, "but I'm in acute pain right now". and he rudely replied that I "shouldn't be in so much pain since my back wasn't really herniated." I then asked for another ER doctor's opinion because I wasn't sure WHAT EXACTLY I HAD WRONG WITH ME and WHY I WAS IN SO MUCH PAIN and this doctor apparently took offense to that and had his staff discharge me and put me outside, alone, heavily sedated. Unfortunately, because of this experience and also because of my health issues, I've now come to intensely dislike the ER, especially the ones in Hawaii. Apparently they only treat drug addicts and homeless people here. And more than likely, you will get lumped into either group, should you happen to find yourself there, in need of proper medical treatment. In particular, I've come to dread the Queens ER because it is a step below what I imagine being incarcerated is like: I've actually had a nurse ask me if I was homeless...EXCUSE ME? (No, Ma-am I'm here for a peri-anal abscess.) Never has THAT happened to me in ANY hospital before! I'm pretty sure some of the doctors in the emergency rooms of HI have become EXTREMELY JADED(it's an adjective) by the abuse and mistreatment they have suffered at the hands of drug addicts and/or homeless people. Not all of the Doctors take it personally though, and many do manage to do a REALLY good job, despite the hardships they face. (like the Queens staff on March 5, 2019), I HATE THAT THIS ONE EXPERIENCE CHANGED EVERYTHING I USED TO THINK WAS GOOD ABOUT QUEEN'S HOSPITAL: THE ALOHA SPIRIT, THE KINDNESS TO YOUR FELLOW MAN SUFFERING IN PAIN, THE ABILITY TO SEE A HUMAN AND NOT THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES. It is these "BAD APPLE" doctors whose time has passed and whose time has come to let someone more "caring" "respectful" and "capable" do the job that is expected of them. Hate, and anger spread like wildfire, but if you manage to "root it out" you can maintain the true balance of love and support towards your fellow man here, in paradise. I hope you do the Pono thing for the people of Oahu and get rid of the doctors who are actually breaking HIPPA LAWS, by not providing adequate care and support for their patients. I plan on contacting KHON2, KHNL, and KGMB with my notated experiences with Queen's hospital, as well as the give them the names of specific doctors who have broken HIPPA laws. I also will be calling Mayor Kirk Caldwell's office as well as Governor David Ige's office, and The State of Hawaii Regulated Industries Complaints Office Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, to lodge a formal and official complaint against The Queens Hospital and its Staff. Thanks for ruining Hawaii for...

Billing department not only seems incompetent, but completely dishonest and blatantly violates medical coding. After being required to pay an unexpected $397 upon arriving at Queen’s West for my husband’s colonoscopy SCREENING (which is completely covered by insurance) and being assured every penny would all be returned when insurance paid the bill in about 3 months we didn’t receive our check for 10 months. It took 27 phone calls from me, 2 from HMSA to tell them they coded it wrong and having to finally get a patient advocate involved. I phoned after a few months after not receiving our money back and they said it changed from a a SCREENING to a DIAGNOSTIC because they removed polyps. If you are ever in this situation, just know this is common violation that dishonest facilities and doctors try to pull. The hospital or doctor is NOT allowed to change it after the fact - polyps or not. If your initial INTENT was to go in for a preventative SCREENING, they absolutely cannot change it after the fact and they know this. They just hope you don’t. Read your insurance policy (you can pull it up on line) and call your insurance company. Once I phoned Queen’s again and pointed this out they had more reasons and more excuses for 10 months. Odeda and Shawnette in billing were unbelievably bad at their job. By a fluke I was able to get HMSA to do a 3-way call to Queen’s billing and Odeda in billing argued with HMSA when HMSA is pointing out to her to look at the report and telling her the improper coding and it took her forever to comprehend and find it on Queen’s own submission. Just embarrassing. They don’t seem to know anything about insurance codes at all. I called sometimes a few days in a row after being told they would call me back tomorrow and of course they didn’t. If you have ever called Queen’s billing you already know you will be on hold for more than an hour, so have a book or other work you can do while you wait, so it less irritating. They repeatedly lied each week with excuse after excuse or said it was fixed and give them 30 days to receive the check. Month after month that was the lie they told me. It went on for over 7 months. Finally after 8 months, I reached out to Constance (a patient advocate) and emailed her what had happened. She called me back the same day. That finally worked. However, it still took billing another 2 months to get us the check. Had I known, I would have reached out to a patient advocate a LOT sooner. My entire family will be doing all our annual visits and 5 year check-ups from here on out on the mainland at a hospital that has their act together. So Queen’s you just lost way more than $397 dollars in your effort to keep it. You lost all that insurance money you would have received for annual check-ups, mammograms, pap smears, colonoscopies, EKGs, ENTs, endocrinologists etc. . . for my entire family. We will avoid this hospital at all costs. Hope I don’t need the ER. Heard horror stories about that...