Summa Health System - Akron Campus — Local services in Akron

I want to start this review by saying this does not reflect my wife's doctor, Dr. Kevin Spear, in any way. He has been fantastic and only just transferred to Summa this year.

The issues start at day one. My wife has had over 50 surgeries and has special conditions and was treated by the residents and nurses as though she was your average person. They couldn't understand that a small woman could have resistances to certain pain meds and have a much different pain threshold than the average person who has only had a couple surgeries.

1.) Surgery is cancelled by the doctor himself, a day beforehand as a simple scoping procedure cannot be done in this case. Hospital calls my wife the next morning, frantically demanding to know why she isn't there for surgery. They got rude with her, then hung up on her and we didn't hear another word.

2.) The day of her actual first surgery, all the consent forms reflect the non-invasive, scope procedure and none of the employees have any clue what is actually happening. Her second surgery had consent forms relevant to the first surgery. Staff assumed each surgery was outpatient and didn't understand why she was staying at the hospital.

3.) Nursing care is more miss than hit and the resident doctors are not great. Lack of quality care undoes part of what the surgeon did, leaving my wife in pain and not healing for roughly 10 more days in the hospital and about 10 days at home and requiring another surgery. Pain meds were never, ever given on time. Nearly always 40+ minutes late, when my wife's stay was about pain management. None of the nurses knew how to work a pain pump. When my wife was experiencing 10/10 levels of pain, the attending nurse told the nurse who knew how to set up the pain pump to "finish her lunch, she's not in a hurry" right in front of my wife who was crying out in pain. The nurses were not familiar with the abdominal pump that had to be installed following my wife's issues with care. The pump was left in the closed position by the people who installed it, causing intense pain after a couple hours of pressure buildup.

4.) The pain management doctors are not actually pain management doctors. A nurse told us that the hospital had laid off the pain doctors. Our pain doctor was Dr. Tipton, who is actually an anesthesiologist. Dr. Tipton has no bedside manner and doesn't listen well Doctors that came in his place always came when something was happening (like a bed change) where my wife was in extreme pain and couldn't speak. Two days after the second surgery, Dr. Tipton called for a psychologist to evaluate my wife as he suspected the pain was "in her head" - again ignoring the sheer number of surgeries my wife has had, her pain threshold, and resistance to certain meds. Not to mention physical differences that make this surgery more delicate for her as well as the fact it was the second surgery, for the same thing, after sustaining damage from the first stay's care. Also after the second surgery, Dr. Tipton did not prescribe the meds that worked to curb pain after the first surgery. He seemed to be experimenting at this point, even though we told everyone we could for days that the pain meds he was giving were not working. It took my wife's doctor intervening to change the meds to what worked. He instructed his resident to change it, who did, but another doctor got in the system at the same time and removed the new order. This left my wife with zero pain meds available for a couple hours. We worked with a nurse to figure out what had happened, and explained which med was the correct one. She came back a while later with the wrong med and was shocked that we were upset. Then we had to wait several hours for this to be corrected. Dr. Tipton appeared not to like his order being changed and showed up with a posse of 3 other doctors the next day to question my wife about the changes.

There's more, but it seems I've reached my character limit. Please avoid this hospital...

This medical center is in need of a complete overhaul when it comes to patient care and advocacy. I have a friend who was in a terrible car accident two weeks ago and who will be coming home to us unable to do many things at age 36. He was VERY lucky to walk away alive from the incident and we're just looking forward to him getting home and starting his rehabilitation in an environment he's comfortable in. Long story short; his doctor has actually started reacting to his quality of care in a retaliatory manner. He is unable to sleep due to comfort from his injuries and is still unable to do basic things like clean and care for himself. His most comfortable position to sleep in, due to his broken ribs and severe neck injuries, is upright in his wheelchair where he inevitably passes out. This morning, a DAY before his release tomorrow and a subsequent two hour drive home she took malicious action towards his medications. He has been on 15mg oxycontin XR for his obvious severe pain and, surprisingly, trazadone, which he quit after messing with his cognition. This morning the "doctor" came in to tell him if he was too tired (from not sleeping last night, or any night) to partake in his physical therapy (3x's weekly when released) that she was going to lower his pain medication to 10mg. Apparently he had the audacity to ask why she would feel the need to do that since he was just having trouble sleeping and tired this morning. Understandably so! Apparently her ego is too fragile to have a patient dare ask about their own personal health care. He is due for release tomorrow with the referrals he is in need of along with the medications to see him through until those appointments are done. She openly asked him "how do YOU even know what MG (milogram) means?". For one, he's not mentally challenged in any way, we've all been involved in his care and worried about the short and long term effects of his injuries and subsequent treatment including medication addiction etc.. This doctor told him to go ahead and just check himself out a day early after she then said "if you think the 10mg oxycontin isn't good enough, how about 5mg oxycodone?!" I've never seen a doctor expect the average public to not understand what a milogram is, then tell said patient to take your medical advice and 'dare' that patient to just leave against it; then take RETALIATORY measures for a therapeutic medication because she can't deal with a patient taking interest in his own care. I'm so appalled and furious for him. I've been a part of social services, addiction counseling for individuals and groups and worked with families within the children's services field and helped with advocacy on many levels for families and individuals. Not only is this physician's behavior reprehensible and unethical it is most certainly a potential liability issue for Summa and their medical board.

We will be hard pressed to deal with his situation as is. I have very little experience in the field of physical rehabilitation and care. Her decision will make his pain unbearable, unnecessarily taking him from pain medication at a more potent chemistry AND dosage to ultimately affecting his ability to participate in the appropriate taking personal pleasure in putting him in pain and telling him to just leave against her own medical advice.

Now the poor man is worried about asking for any help in using the bathroom; he doesn't want to ask about his three referrals for his after care services and surgeries.

I've advised him to tell a nurse he needs to file a complaint against her and then get in contact with Summa's patient ombudsman/advocate today. However, he is terrified that if he does anything to further upset his doctor that she'll just take more risks in his care. He will be released in the next 24 hours and I will try to convince him to speak to someone up there about his care and his rights...

Where do I begin with how much I despise the doctors that “took care” of my father on the Acute Care Elderly floor of Akron City. Don’t send your loved ones there. I suspect the quick decision to designate my father for Hospice has something to do with this hospital’s score for Medicare and money. It won’t effect their bottom line if they designate him for hospice and he dies within thirty days. They probably didn’t think I was smart enough to know about that. My father was written off by his supposed medical team from day one. We had to beg for treatment. The constant push for hospice was palpable. His doctors never called us to tell us about his treatment plan. The only thing they cared about was the ability to give Ativan. We always called them first. Arrogant is a good way to describe his care team. My dad clearly was suffering from neurolyptic malignant syndrome from medications. He came out of it and slowly recovered. We had to keep saying..please give him time. Let him come out of it before you write him off. On numerous occasions, I found my dad naked sitting in his own urine without a mat under him. He was never dressed, bathed, shaved, or had his teeth brushed. My sister had to do it. She went up there daily, because of his lack of care. We feared he would never be fed. My dad was also given Ativan in order to take vitals. Vitals that could have been taken later. It caused him to sleep all day and could not be fed by my sister. One of the nurses, Dee, was sitting on the computer the whole time and never checked on my dad within the two or three hour period we were there. Once my dad came out of his state, they wanted to pull his IV right away. He was only eating little by little. This is why an”ethics committee” was called. We wanted the IV and his supposed doctor did not. Pulled it without a blood test to determine whether he was dehydrated. The ethics committee is a JOKE. Doctors from the same hospital reviewing their fellow doctors is unethical. It was not their decisions to pull that without our consent. POA means nothing. We were not invited to the ethics meeting either. Our input was not asked for nor what my father would want. The ethics committee was still involved even to the point of discharge. The discharge doctor let that slip. He also said the “ hospital feels the family is dragging their feet about placement.” That is freaking rude. I thought we were customers there. There was no set date for discharge and we were waiting on the social worker. I would not want my dog to stay at this hospital. Where is my apology? I see other...