Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center: Emergency Room — Local services in Johnstown

My Dad is 91 years old and showing signs of confusion and dementia. Up until June 9th he was living independently in the West End section of town. On June 9th he had a stroke. On June 26th he was moved into a personal care home.

My Dad was sent home from the hospital with a catheter and recently started complaining about bad stomach pains. He requested to go to the Emergency Room on the morning of July 3rd. He was taken to Conemaugh Memorial Hospital Emergency Room. He was there for most of the day and I would call him or the nurses station periodically to check on him. Around 3pm I was told by a nurse that he was being discharged and they would get a med van to take him back to the home. I verified with the nurse that it would be today and she said they would try and if not they would put him onto a room for the night. At 6pm I received a call from my Dad saying he was still sitting there.

I called the nurses station to ask if his ride was called. An EXTREMELY rude nurse told me “Yes, it was called but he won’t be getting picked up until 6 am tomorrow”. I said “oh ok. Has he been put into a room?”. She told me no, he is sitting in the waiting room and would need to sit there all night. I was shocked. I told her what was said to me earlier about putting him in a room and she said there were no rooms in the ER available. I said “Ma’am, he’s 91 years old and has dementia”. She said “We are aware of that and there is nothing we can do. He will just need to sit there til 6am”.

I went into panic mode. I called every transportation place in the city including ambulances and no one could pick him up. We were just about to make the 4 hour drive from Maryland to go and get him, when a friend of mine who has a sister who lives in town said she could go and get him and take him back to his personal care home.

What kind of health facility would do this to a 91 year old with physical health issues and dementia?! Also to be so rude and uncaring about it. I do understand that our healthcare workers are busy and overworked, but something better must happen in these situations.

We were extremely lucky that my Dad was picked up and safely returned by a friend’s sister instead of wandering out on his own at like...

People are laying over chairs vomiting and crying out in pain for hours upon hours. My mother had a ct which was read incorrectly and we didn’t even realize until a doctor close to us read it after she was discharged which we are going to look into how and why this happened. The impression of the ct mentioned and even measured an organ she had taken out in the 90s. This is a serious error. The HIPPA violations going on there are horrible. They come into the waiting room to treat you around people inches away listening and throwing up and crying out. Conemaugh ER is more like a war time mash unit than an actual hospital. Another instance is the staff yelling at the patients for crying out and asking how much longer. I overheard a nurse say to another worker “ that one over there needs to just shut up and wait I’m sick of the crying “. Us waiting that heard that we’re taken back. Another nurse said to my mother “you wouldn’t be walking if your bowel was perforated” which was horrible seeing as how the last time her bowel was perforated she walked in there. This nurse then told my mother if she was going to die she wouldn’t be talking because my mom said I feel like I’m dying. After that another staff checked my mom in. It’s heartbreaking what that emergency room has become. They don’t have any gurneys there for people who can barely sit up to lay down. They hooked my mom up to an Iv and it was empty for hours upon hours with no one ever coming back. They gave her Iv medicine and never even followed up to see if it worked. If conemaugh is the only ER please don’t go alone because you may possibly die in the waiting room and nobody would know for hours and hours. Something has to change there. God help those patients. There’s so much unsafe...

I was not impressed (I work in nursing administration).

This review is post COVID and spans several visits.

Let's talk about wheelchairs. If a patient comes in with a foot injury... Give the patient a wheelchair upon check in. Or when you triage. Or when you go to imaging. Or when you call the patient back into the emergency department.

If you are going to attempt to admit a patient... Have a room for them (you had six wards closed at the time and offered me a chair for the night.). That one might actually end up as a report to the department of health honestly.

Your staff needs to be professional. Starting screaming matches with irate patients (she had been there in the hallway in one of those chairs all day waiting for a blood transfusion and your staff had literally forgotten about her and any who were stopped couldn't be bothered to help) is grossly inappropriate; the nurse should have been fired on the spot. That incident too should probably be a report to the department of health.

Your staff has repeatedly shown over several visits that they are unable to be professional and that they are unable to run an efficient emergency department. They regularly engage in harmful and unsafe practices. Willful negligence should be your motto.

Shame on you. The community...