United Hospital District — Local services in Blue Earth

I took my 8-month-old son to the ER because every time we tried to lay him down for bed, he would start screaming uncontrollably. He was vomiting, gagging as if trying to get something up, and struggling to breathe. You could hear a bubbling sound in his stomach. This behavior was completely out of character—he’s normally very easygoing and goes to sleep without any issues in his crib. We arrived at the ER around 12:30 a.m. and waited in the lobby until about 1:45 a.m. During that entire time, my baby was crying, visibly uncomfortable, and clearly in distress. Despite this, a nurse came out and asked, “Do you even still want to be seen?” I said yes, and we were finally taken back. My son hadn’t slept since his last nap at 4 p.m. and was exhausted and very uncomfortable. When the nurse tried to take his temperature under the arm, he was too upset to cooperate. She then attempted to use the forehead scanner but said it wasn’t reading, so she decided not to get a temperature at all. After taking vitals, we waited again until the doctor came in. She briefly checked him, looked in his ears, and then ordered chest and abdominal x-rays—still without taking a temperature. It took a while for imaging to be ready, and by the time the x-rays were done, it was well past 2 a.m. No one checked in on us again until around 3 a.m., when the doctor returned and said the x-rays looked fine, then left. At around 3:36 a.m., the nurse came back with a dose of Benadryl and said, “Here, have some Benadryl,” and as she gave it to him, she added, “Go sleepy now baby. Cleary was given to him just to go to sleep.” (Just to reiterate—he is ONLY 8 months old.) Throughout the visit, we were repeatedly told he was “just fussy.” But I know my baby, and this was not normal fussiness. After 3.5-4 hours, we were discharged with a diagnosis of a...

For the most part I am very happy with the care I receive here. But I have one major complaint. If you use the counciling service here they put literally everything you talk about in your general chart so literally any one who can see your chart ethically & unethically can see very private information. That includes any specialty clinic like mayo or Sanford clinics and once Sanford joins with the clinic system in twin cities ( Fairview if I recall correctly). That's way to many clinics employees that can see information that only your councilor should have access to. Uhd will not remove this information from general view, they stupidly believe periodically checking to see who's accessed your chart later for appropriate acess is some how protecting your privacy rights. That's Not even close to protecting your privacy, that nothing more than house cleaning inappropriate actions after the fact. If you are seeking counseling, go someplace else unless you don't care if anyone that works in medical field can see what your dealing with ( and potentially your issues could become a topic of local gossip, my sisters a retired nurse, so I know things are shared that should have remained private). Bottom line, don't use couciling services through...

UHD nurse 's & doctors are great. But UHD does have other issues. You have the right to not have certain health information posted in your charting & UHD doesn't respect that. So do get care here for anything you don't want every nurse & care provider to see. Also more recently labs orders from my specialty are not visible even though I signed care everywhere releases & now UHD is having trouble with getting specialists lab orders in. We tried sending directly to Labs fax & to medical records fax, so it looks like UHD either needs a better IT person or new equipment. Either way UHD is not doing as well as they could with patient care in the community, because of these issues . I guess medical care in small communities has it limitations & draw backs, which is to bad , I happenen to like supporting our local business. Both Drs I've seen at UHD are wonderful , caring & good at communicating in a way you can see understand. If you have a outside specialist labs or images sent to UHD, best you check to see they received them, don't assume their equipment is working correctly. I had 3 specialist tell me they aren't able to see the results from their orders sent to UHD in December. If I see a improvement I'll be sure to address it...