Winona Health - Inpatient Care — Attraction in Winona

8/1/2018; I started having abdominal cramping and pain around 2am. By 5am the pain had gotten really bad about an 8/10 on the pain scale so I went to ER at Winona Health. Dr. Koo ordered a CT w/contrast, labs, and gave me pain medications but the medication didn’t do too much and the pain just kept getting worse. When the results of the CT and labs came back, he said there was nothing different on my CT from previous CT’s on file and that there was nothing wrong with me that would be causing such intense pain. He sent me home with a diagnosis of Gastroenteritis and told me to drink a gallon of water with Miralax as fast as possible to flush out my bowels and take Tylenol. When asked repeatedly by my family why he is sending me home in so much pain, he again said there is nothing in my labs or on The CT with contrast that could cause me so much pain. My mother asked again as I lay there in excruciating pain and he said he didn’t feel comfortable treating me any further and that I need to go home. I left Winona hospital in so much pain (10/10 on pain scale) I had to be taken out in a wheel chair and helped into the car. A few hours after discharge I started having blood in my stool and diarrhea. My mom called the ER and asked the nurse to tell Dr Koo she needs to talk to him about the blood. He had an ER nurse call back and told her there’s nothing to worry about and that all the blood was normal as I flush myself out. That was mid morning, some hours later with more blood in each stool, I had my mom take me as fast as possible to Mayo Clinic Hospital in Rochester. Their ER Dr.’s immediately pulled the CT scan from Winona Health and had it re-read by Mayo Radiologists. During the new read they found I had a new clot in the the Superior Mesenteric Vein, Ischemia Mesenteric Acute, small bowel wall thickening and small bowel venous congestion. Mayo Clinic then had teams of surgeons get to work on me fast along with a GI team and vascular thrombophelia team and started high intensity heparin and diliaudid IV pushes, told me I would be hospitalized and that they were collaborating if I needed surgery immediately to remove parts of my bowels that were dying from blood/oxygen starvation, or if they could be saved with fast enough treatment of the clot blocking and backing up the blood flow. The hours I spent in Winona Health ER and the hours I spent at home trying to flush my guts out and not worry about blood flowing from my rectum per DR. Koo’s instructions had clearly become very costly.

This was a complete failure by DR. Koo at Winona Health ER and the Winona health radiologist as well. Furthermore no patient in that much severe abdominal pain should ever be literally kicked out of the Emergency department in such horrendous pain and refused treatment by the ER Doctor and staff and dumped on the curb like a piece of trash simply because the Dr. can’t figure out what is wrong and shows through body language he thinks the patient is just faking it for drugs. I almost lost my small intestines and may still lose part of them and my life because of it. This isn’t the first time Dr. Koo completely failed his oath in patient care for me either. He botched my first thrombosis in my portal vein in 2013 when he first accused me of being an IV drug user or an alcoholic because I had a portal vein thrombosis and then started me on warafin without any heparin bridging so my clot grew for a week and with no pain medication until I could get evaluated by mayo clinic who diagnosed me with hereditary antithrombin deficiency and put me on Xarelto anticoagulation and oxycodone for severe pain immediately. I certainly should not want to think what happens to the patient that goes into Winona Health ER department with a heart attack and Dr. Koo is on call. My Mayo Clinic Dr.s have expressed outrage about the treatment I have recieved in both cases from Dr. Koo. Something needs to happen to this Dr.’s license to practice before an unknowing patient gets misdiagnosed or mistreated and it leads to something they don’t heal or...

Back in November, 2018, a random fainting spell while standing at the stove, subsequent fall and direct hit to my head on the ceramic tile floor in the kitchen left me alone, in and out of consciousness for hours, and incredibly nauseous until I was able to muster strength enough to crawl on all fours to my bed where I lay until my husband arrived home. I was completely unaware I had hit my head, leaving a massive, discolored goose egg on my forehead, which my husband immediately noticed and questioned me about. Due to the location of the head injury on my frontal lobe, many of my higher thought processes were significantly (and to others, obviously) impaired, such as judgment, self awareness, delays in thought processing and comprehension, etcetera. I was in nursing school at the time, and only sought medical help, following encouragement from several student peers and even a few instructors, who said I simply was not myself. At that time, my school was in Winona, so for the sake of convenience, I simply went to Winona Health ER versus my usual H/C facility, Gundersen in La Crosse. Dr. Koo was my attending physician that day in the ER. After his attempt at maybe a 4 minute visit with me, his provision of assurance that I did NOT have a TBI, and a condescending offer that he could order an MRI if "it would make me feel better," Dr. Koo attempted to end the visit by heading for the doorway. Before he was able to exit the room, I firmly stated I had been unable to comprehend any of the information he had thrown at me, and strongly suggested he have a seat, and again explain the information he had provided to me in terms I could understand (this should have been a significant indication that a TBI was possible). He reluctantly, and quite unpleasantly gave a second explanation, then proceeded to immediately release me from the ER without any actual assessment or suggested intervention. As I proceeded to drive back to La Crosse, I realized, I was regularly, briefly blacking out behind the wheel of my car (though I could not comprehend the danger or significance at the time). I made the decision to go straight to Gundersen, La Crosse, where I was evaluated by 2 neurologists for 3 to 4 hours and diagnosed with a severe TBI. This diagnosis was made without the use of any radiologic studies, such as the MRI study offered by Dr. Koo, as evidence of traumatic brain damage, as in a TBI, would not be visible within the results. Dr. Koo was undoubtedly one of the worst H/C providers I have ever had the displeasure of interacting with. He presented with an overall lack of compassion or consideration for his patient, extremely brief time allotment, formation of a baseless, inaccurate, personal judgment call regarding my lack of any medical diagnosis, as well as his proposed MRI procedure suggested simply as a means of "comfort" was incredibly inappriate, dangerously inaccurate, unprofessionaL, and simply WRONG. Instead of working to fulfill his hippocritical oath to "do no harm," amongst other ethical considerations, Dr. Koo's poor professional judgment, subsequent medical decisions as well as lack of appropriate healthcare recommendations, he created a significant threat to the health to both myself as well as to individuals driving with me on my way to Gundersen Lutheran, La Crosse. It is well within a physician's scope of practice to adequately assess each patient, address his/her concerns, and make professional, appropriate recommendations based on an extensive knowledge base and training, professional experience, and current evidence based practice standards. In neglecting to fulfill any of these responsibilities, Dr. Koo chose instead to unnecessarily place numerous lives in danger, while inadvertently conveying his overall incompetence as a physician. How many similar complaints must be voiced against this "physician" before action is finally taken to prevent his dangerous and unprofessional conduct from occurring with potential future...

A few months ago my son and i went to ER for breathing treatments because we both have asthma we had had a house fire 3 weeks before we went to the ER we were living in a Hotel in winona the day we went home to meat the service master there to start cleaning my son was in school wile we did some of the cleaning that night we slept in the house was a coughing nightmare so we went to the ER the next day after my son came home from school. After waiting for the Dr in a ER room a nurse came in to ask us questions about me and my son. one of her questions was do i smoke when i told her no i don't she was short with me and exited the room a little wile later An Asian Dr came in to our room and started off preparing me for what he has to say that it was not going to be nice he started raising his voice at me about how he knows i smoke because he can smell it on my clothes and i should be ashamed of my self for smoking with a child who has asthma. my mouth about dropped to the floor then i realized OMG i must smell like smoke as i was unaware of it because i was in it 24 7 cleaning it up with service masters i had cleaned all my sons toys that day with a smoke cleaning solution but my clothes i never changed that day before i went to the ER i hadn't realized i was that bad i didn't put two and two together that this might be causing us the asthma so bad. what i am appalled at is the simple fact the Nurse ran to the Dr and told him i was a liar that she smells smoke there for i must be lying! If she smelled it and i said i don't smoke she could have just asked why do i smell like smoke? Then i would have told her oh ive been cleaning up our house we had a house fire and i think its why our asthma is so bad but no i was stereo typed accused blatantly scolded and humiliated when i walked out of that ER every person in the Er room was staring at me because they had heard the Dr yelling at me through the curtains. I will never go to this ER again what should have been a simple explanation of why was an attack and an accusation instead i felt humiliated and insulted and i was stereo typed. so my advise to you is if you have a house fire and you cant breath make sure to tell them asap why you smell like you do because they wont ask you' they will just ASSUME! On another occasion my best friend and neighbor woke up one morning with chest pain so she went to the ER and found out her lung had collapsed they did her surgery and put in a tube after a few days she complained her chest was in crushing pain i figured it was just due to her surgery but we took her to the ER any way they found out that the Dr who did the surgery put the tube to close to her heart and every time her heart would beat would cause her so much pain and could cause her a heart attack so they had to re do her surgery to move the tube away from her heart causing her a longer recovery she refuses to go back there and warned me not to i should have...