SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital - St. Louis — Attraction in Richmond Heights

At first I thought this place just needed to clean up on some of their incompetent staff and disgusting and dirty and environment because i've met so many compassionate staff here who actually do their jobs to the best of their abilities...NOW i'm changing my review to one star and never going here again.

I've given this place the benefit of the doubt way too much and more and more, I've seen a rapid decline in their services.

Pregnant women....if you have the option of not delivering here or receiving prenatal care then please utilize it. This is no place to deliver a baby....you cannot trust that you will always be treated fairly and you will end up having anxiety and anger over it. There are way too many bad seeds working here and destroying what was once a beautiful and compassionate facility. After being here in preterm labor for more than 12 hours with no medication...then being lectured by a doctor once again about receiving narcotic pain medicines for VERY LEGITIMATELY PAINFUL conditions (such as unnecessary vaginal exams with a CERVICAL SUTURE IN PLACE, leaving me in hours of pain. I have even refused a few times and still was made to feel obligated to go through with them) and not having ever asked for them and instead being offered them, then made to look like a fool in the end, I can no longer go here with people being judgmental of me. I am at wits end! I left against medical advice because I was tired of having to beg people to manage my pain patiently and never getting loud or rude with anyone. My doctor seemed to be the only one interested in my care but then constantly flip flopping on me. She visited my room, siad she was steppping out for a feew mins to discuss my treatment with her team and that she would be right back.....SHE NEVER CAME BACK and instead left me at the mercy of poorly informed staff members who basically neglected me.

As a patient you have the right to be apart of the decisions of your plan of treatment, and some of these people flat out don't get it and just ignore you and just do whatever the hell they want. Then when you finally come to the point of having to nervously complain to a manager, things get worse! Mostly they just defend their colleagues, while merely patronizing you and nothing improves. Then the people you complain about, try to make you uncomfortable reporting them, and try to intimidate you or seek vengeance. I once had a nurse try and refuse my medication because she thought her opinion was more knowledgeable than the doctors' (which she has NO RIGHT TO DO) and had to report her, then she comes around the next day peeking into my room trying to give me dirty looks! The problem had already been solved by simply requesting that she not be assigned to me any further. But of course, she tells other nurses lies about me and has them hovering over me trying to listen in on what were supposed to be private conversations with their manager about the level of neglect and even ASKING ME WHAT I SAID! None of their damn business!

Then you have these half assed caring doctors who are nice one day and entirely rude the next. I shouldn't have to go through this just to be treated fairly, as well as nobody else.

That's why so many reviews of this place are so negative! They are all true! Dirty rooms. Staff with attitudes, and severe malpractice. Then they happily collect your money!

So please whatever you do, don;t wast your time here, or any other SSM related facility. They are all the same in the end....overcharging patients and poorly billing your insurance after giving you shitty healthcare. One or two times, you may experience entirely positive visits, but it's all a scam to keep you going there. They will eventually screw you in the end and leave you feeling helpless, broken, and sometimes even to blame for their lack of decent service.

We had to transfer to Mercy and deal with some idiot for a NP but eventually after complaining, finally received top notch care from her charge nurse. I ended up delivering here preterm...

#️⃣1️⃣ Somewhere between my bedroom (the last place I saw them) & Room 481 at the hospital 🏥, my purple eyeglasses 👓 were lost.

When I was able to right myself, I thoroughly searched for them, hoping someone had seen & put them in my bag 👜, but to no avail. I immediately informed someone that they were missing, that while in the ambulance 🚑, my bag had fallen over, and that perhaps they were still inside on the floor, but even after my 3rd time asking someone to check with EMS, I never heard back from anyone about them. No one there or at my facility has seen them, so for the SECOND TIME this year, due to having to deal with St. Mary's Hospital, I am needing to financially replace my non-insured visual aide.

The 1st time I had to replace them was a result of my Feb. 2023 omission for my first (and hopefully only🤞🏽🤞🏽) bout of Covid. While moving my bedside table, the nurse unknowingly knocked my eyeglasses onto the floor & actually stepped on them, breaking the left lense out. As Murphy's Law would have it, my left eye 👁 is the only one I have vision out of, so of course there was absolutely no way around not having to replace them. To this day, St. Mary's has yet to offer me a single dime in reimbursement, and the same will most likely happen this time.

#️⃣2️⃣ Why is there always a back-n-forth battle with the doctors at St. Mary's to simply receive the medicines I have been prescribed by my primary care physician? If I am given 20mg 💊💊 of a sleep aide every night at home to be able to have a chance of sleeping, then why would anyone else only approve 5mg while under their care, as if that will have any effect? If I am prescribed that same dosage every time I have dialysis to help me relax & hopefully sleep through the treatment due to the level of anxiety I experience having to sit there without moving for 3-4 hours at a time, then why only give me 10mg at the hospital? Make it make sense 😐

#️⃣3️⃣ If I have been given sleep aides to sleep, then why on God's green Earth 🌎 would you wake me up in the middle of the night 🌃 (or at any time, for that matter) for any non-emergency reason, like for just to take vitals or to ask me if I'm ok? The one that Really gets me is the being woken up out of a good sound sleep just to be given sleeping pills, like SSSERIOUSLY?!?!🙄🤦🏽‍♀️😡

Wwwell, I WAS doing Just Fine, until I was unnecessarily awakened for no good reason, but I'm wide awake now, not able to go back to sleep, not able to receive another round of sleeping pills so that I possibly CAN go back to sleep, not able to order anything to eat or drink because the kitchen is closed, bored, with no one to talk to or chat with📱at this hour, nothing interesting or good to watch on TV 📺, more than likely cold 🥶 & uncomfortable, and in a lot of diabetic neuropathy foot/ankle pain 🦶🏽💥, in which the doctors refuse to give me effective doses of Morphine that would solve all of that in just 1 simple injection 💉 in one of my IVs.

If people appear to be breathing 🌬 and resting peacefully 😴, are not in ICU or on their deathbeds, do not have their call lights on or are asking for anything, and none of the equipment they are hooked up to is indicating any type of duress 🚨, then what is so illegally wrong with simply leaving them be until they wake up on their own? 🤷🏽‍♀️ I mean, correct me if I'm way off here, but doesn't healing happen more rapidly while we're asleep? 🧐

#️⃣4️⃣ At some point between deciding to discharge a patient and EMS approaching their bedside 🛏 to put them on a stretcher & take them away, it would just really be nice to inform them that they will be heading home that day, and perhaps even giving them an approximate time 🕰 or ETA ⏱️, so that they can gather themselves mentally, pack their belongings, maybe order & eat a meal 🍱, wash their face, use the restroom, be cleaned up (if applicable), and actually be ready to go when their ride arrives instead of being totally surprised & caught completely off guard by the transporters entering their room.

Respectfully, Ms....

This review is strictly for the Same Day Surgery Department. And in reality, I actually give zero stars.

But to start with, my surgery was in June 2018. My surgeon was fantastic – she pulled a cantaloupe sized tumor out through my belly button (via laparoscopic surgery). My post-anesthesia nurse was fantastic. Hannah and Margaret on the 5th floor were fantastic as well.

The same cannot be said for the two nurses that attended to me during the two hours before my surgery. The first thing that was shoved at me on the day of my surgery was not registration questions, but rather a cup for urine that I no longer possessed and no longer could produce because I had urinated right before my 5 minute trip to the hospital and I had nothing to drink in preparation for anesthesia.

Nobody thought to tell me that there would be a mandatory urine pregnancy test on the morning of my surgery that would act as an “on/off switch” to whether or not I would even be allowed to have surgery. I was deemed pregnant and ineligible for surgery until l proved otherwise with a negative pregnancy test.

The two nurses who attended to me insisted that they knew my body better than me and knew that I was going to be able to provide them with the urine that they needed. I was patronized and told ridiculous things like “my kidneys are always producing urine” (and I know that the last time I took Biology was in high school, but I’m pretty sure there’s a bladder and a brain between the kidney and the cup and in no way can a urine sample be compared to a blood draw – if you stick me with a needle, I will bleed. I have no choice. A urine sample does not involve sticking my kidney with a needle and having urine involuntarily flow out) and “they only needed a teeny tiny little bit for the test.” Then they asked me to try. I gave them a teeny tiny little bit but was told that it wasn’t enough.

The two nurses acted like they couldn’t do anything to me until they had that urine sample, they couldn’t even give me an IV. There I was standing naked in a hospital gown in the middle of the room on the day of my 5 hour abdominal surgery, and I was INCONVENIENCING them. They begrudgingly gave me an IV so I could give them a urine sample. I had to constantly hear how they couldn’t do this or that and this and that because they didn’t have the urine sample. I INCONVENIENCED them on the day of MY surgery.

I find it reprehensible that a woman is not told of the mandatory testing that she will have to complete. The first thing a woman sees at the hospital on the day of her surgery shouldn’t be a plastic urine cup but maybe rather compassionate care. If a woman knows she can’t offer urine, why is she patronized and harassed about it and then begrudgingly offered an IV. Maybe, the IV should be the first thing she sees on the day of her surgery before any mention of a urine test.

Women deserve better. They should know about the mandatory urine testing on the day of their surgery so they can plan accordingly. They know their bodies. Some will know that they need to hold their urine while others know their bodies will produce it no matter how hydrated they are. If an IV cannot be provided upon arrival, then a woman ABSOLUTELY NEEDS to know about this urine test prior to her surgery date so she can plan accordingly. As a woman who purposefully stopped drinking fluids for her surgery, I should have been told ahead of time of this mandatory test. I would have held my urine for them after I woke up. My patient autonomy to make that decision was not granted to me because nobody thought that I needed to know that information.

As a resident of Richmond Heights, it’s truly sad that I will not be able to support my community’s hospital. If you are looking for compassionate care on the morning of your surgery, please...