MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center — Attraction in Long Beach

I have had the ability to experience Long Beach Memorial’s emergency room three times in the past two years. Each time has resulted in a worse and worse opinion. Tonight topped the cake. I was called by my sister who had brought my nephew in for feeling faint and his heart felt funny. The backup in the emergency room is understandable for such a busy hospital. However I was only delivering food for my nephew and sister. I was escorted back by the orderly in the emergency room. He explained that they can only allow one adult per peds patient. Again, this is understandable. The orderly leaves me to check in with my sister and nephew. My sister is explaining what was happening while I gave my nephew a meal. At no point did I ever sit in a seat, watch the TV, speak with anyone else other than my sister and nephew. Within 2 mins the orderly comes back to me and says that he is receiving complaints about me being in the room because my nephew has 2 adults with him. How interesting that this rule was being enforced with me, but right behind my nephew was a young child, seated with his mother and father. And in the corner of the waiting room, another family: mother, father and child, were also seated. No one had asked these families to remove an adult. They were seated and watching the television. There were more adults in the pediatric emergency room (not counting staff) than there were children. However, I followed the directions of the orderly. This didn’t sit right with me and I caught up with the orderly and asked who complained, because I had only been in the room for 2 mins and was only checking with my sister regarding my nephew and asking her about how to move her car. He asked me to meet him in the front. I did so, waiting for him to arrive. At which point, I again asked him who had complained, to which he said other patients with family members. He said, again, the rule is only one adult per child. I was completely fed up at this point and asked him how that could be the case when there are children with both mother and father in the waiting room. My sister, a single parent, had to leave her other children in the car, but there are children with both parents back there. The orderly then said that there shouldn’t be. I said “I’ll wait for the other parents to be escorted out as well then.” At this point, security has noted that I have become agitated. A female security guard with more metal in her face than should be allowed near the metal detector outside, starts to reprimand me and telling me I need to calm down. I told her that I will wait calmly for the other patients to have their additional support be removed from the pediatric waiting room. The guard then says she doesn’t understand what I’m talking about. So I calmly repeat the issue again. The guard then said, I will go back and check, and if there are patients with more than one adult, we’ll let you go back. I waited over 15 mins for the guard to come back. The guard never came back. Not surprising. What IS surprising to me, is that the security guard went into the pediatric waiting room and started speaking with the staff in there. It seems she forgot that my sister was still in the room because she proceeded to say that “I don’t know what her problem was, she just starts making a scene in the front about not being allowed back here.” My sister then stood up and corrected her. According to my sister, the guard then starts to stutter and said, “Oh, well I didn’t really know what was going on or why she was upset.” Lie. The guard briefly looked around the room and left. No one ever came back to the front to speak with me. My sister ended up leaving about 20 mins after this interaction because the wait time for a patient to be seen by a doctor was almost 12 hrs. Also, my other sister came here after a car accident and the nurse put the cervical collar on my sister upside down. So I wouldn’t even trust the medical professionals here. Avoid LB Memorial at all costs. I love being a...

Hospital kicked out my 2 year old son that has underlying complex conditions such as seizures and breathing issues, he is considered medically fragile since birth. He is non walking/ non verbal/ poor hearing and vision. He is fed through gtube. I got him admitted into the PICU for RSV and bilateral pneumonia on Feb 26; through the ER. 20 days later he is still fighting the viral infection. PICU doctor called me very irate to pick up my son and take him home; because he had been in there too long, even though he was not medically ready to come home. Some of the nurses were extremely lazy and the times I was there, they hardly or rarely walked into my sons room and some nurses were complaining of suctioning that he was too much to handle and they were suctioning too much. His oxygen had dropped to 11 percent and he turned blue and they had to bag him twice , 2 days prior to them releasing him. Many times when we walked in his nasal cannula was off his face, he had an excruciating amount of phlegm all over his face and eyes and muffled under pillows and his machines were going off and nobody would walk into the room. One of the doctors had a conversation with us and told us the reason they were kicking my son out was because the nurses had complained too much that he was too much to handle and they had no downtime and the doctors got annoyed. It is awful to release a patient when he’s not medically ready only because he’s been there’s long enough and nurses are complaining. They released my son on 3-4 liters of oxygen, he is still in much distress fighting the infection; with a very ween and weak cough; unable to expectorate. I get bloody phlegm when I suction. I have him connected to the monitor at home and the monitor keeps going off. I do not have the proper equipment at home for emergencies and if they couldn’t handle him and they’re the picu; how can they justify kicking him out and sending him home. Right now he’s in a lot of distress, crying in pain and groaning. They also released him with no portable oxygen to take him out, I only have oxygen for home use. No formula, for me to feed him; he has a gtube. And no prescriptions. They were so desperate for him to be out that they didn’t write any orders. I had to call the next day and be on the phone all day with insurance and supplier attempting to get everything. My son had massive seizures when we got home that night, and I administered my last dose of emergency seizure med. He mainly or only has seizures when he’s fighting something. He does not cry only when he’s in pain. I see a lot of negligence from the staff, he was ignored and possibly aspirated from them feeding him so fast and never coming into the room to check on him; which caused him to be this way again. He was already doing fine then he backtracked when some nurses cared for him that were ignoring him. I have a medical degree myself and I’m knowledgeable in medicine and diagnosing. The same way I took him in on February 26, is the same way they released him to me. When around early March; he was smiling; happy, cooing, and not in distress. This tells me there was negligence from nurses in between and they tried to cover it up by sending him home. I will be looking into filing complaints. Anybody can contact me that wishes to do so. I heard stories of other parents. We trust these people with the lives of our children and this...

I am very disappointed with this hospital, I arrived this morning at 8:30 and I am now leaving at 9:24 PM over 13 Hours later. Check up. First off the medical staff here at least the ones that I dealt with were very friendly and I was taken in almost immediately as I was coming from urgent care. They took my vitals, they drew blood, they did an EKG, And listen to what my concerns were. I would end up leaving without ever seeing the Doctor, unbelievable livable but I could not continue to awake in that waiting room where people were coughing and throwing up as I take care of my dad who is 83 and already immune compromised and will not risk-taking something home to give to him that would cause him to become ill or even pass away.

I arrived at the hospital ER department, there were plenty of seats available and it did not seem like anybody was being taken care of at all? When I finally left, there were no seats available in fact there were so many people standing in the back of the emergency room waiting area that it looked like it could be a fire code violation. It felt like a can of sardines if you ask me. During my 13 plus hours there I watched 3 different movies on my tablet, and I fell asleep twice. I was called for vital signs checks after I've been there for over 8 hours, I really believe it was just to see if I was still there as opposed to do they really need to take care of me? I am pretty certain that if I didn't ask the gentleman sitting next to me to hold my seat, I would not have had a seat to come back to and would have been standing the next 7 hours.

Why did it take the emergency room doctors so long to get its patients in and out of the emergency room, I used to work at this hospital and I've never seen such a slow process as I did today. My first mistake was coming back to this hospital trusting that they would be the same as if it was when I was employed at this location. My second mistake was waiting so long at this hospital when I should have gone to St. Mary's Medical Center.

This hospital needs to work on expediting its emergency room patients, they either need to be checked in or cleared and checked out, not piling up to where you have more than half of the people complaining about the wait time in the emergency room and they were not even there as long as I was. Let me be honest though, there was 2 people there that had been there for over 12 & 18 hours at least I recall hearing the nurse try to reason with one of those particular patients.

This review is just my honest opinion based on my experience in medical centers and the mere fact that I used to work at this very same hospital when it used to be called Long Beach Memorial...