Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Lakeway — Local services in Lakeway

I just wrote 2 very detailed and negative reviews for Seton Main, and St. Davids Northwest, and I am happy to say that I can write a short and very positive review for this hospital (short for me). First thing's first... the hospital is beautiful. It's as if God came down from the heavens on the seventh day, his day of rest and built this place from the ground up. This hospital lobby has tall Ceilings, very friendly staff, plenty of parking that is easy to navigate. The hospital itself isn't massive like taking up a few blocks like St. Davids or Seton Main but I'm glad it's the size it is. It seems at least from a patients perspective that this hospital runs very smoothly.

All hospitals certainly have their fair share of issues, and I cannot exactly write a review for every time I have come to this hospital. I wish I could... maybe I'll make that a series on my blog or something but this review is based off the first time I came here. I came here to get an MRI of my Neck on a Saturday in the early morning. There was no insane drive to find a place to park, no crazy paperwork, and no wait time at all. I paid went into the MRI room with my Technician who was named Victor and he explained everything to me and was super nice. I have gotten several MRI's before and other scans and it's pretty scary being stuck in that tube in uncomfortable positions... Elbow MRI's and wrist MRI's are the worst (prepare yourself if you have to do that), brain MRI's also suck because you have to put on this even more claustrophobic helmet, but fortunately for a neck MRI I could just chill on my back.

Victor was nice enough to speak to me through the intercom and tell me how long each section of the MRI was and gave me feedback that I was doing great each time the machine would pause which... I wish this was standard practice everywhere because it's better than being completely cutoff from human contact and feeling like you are alone in there. Even if you are not claustrophobic like me it's nice to have human contact in there because it's a bit scary. Anyway Victor made the scan fly by, and he was nice enough to get me scans right away on a CD disk which at any other hospital would take 3 hours and here it took 10 minutes. I would have to come back Monday for the report of the test though as it was a Saturday and a doctor had to sign off on it. I came back Monday and got the scan report in literally 15 minutes. Everywhere else it takes 2 weeks because apparently they have security concerns about emailing it so they send it via USPS which I can't think of a less secure way of sending anything in my life.

Baylor Scott and White also took very good care of my Grandfather. He later passed away in a St. Davids Hospital and honestly my family and I think to this day that if he remained in the Baylor Scott and White Hospital he likely would be alive today. Though it wasn't this hospital my grandfather was at, I think all of the Baylor Scott and White Hospitals are far superior to the others at least in Austin (Seton Southwest is a special case - they don't have the latest and greatest tech and I wish they had a ER Neuro department but it's far better than Seton Main & St. Davids that's for sure!).

If I were to give any negatives at all I would say that it's important to have good coffee in your hospital not just for families but for doctors and nurses etc. (A full time coffee place in the lobby would be incredible lol). Also I will be doing a separate review for the Baylor Scott and White Specialty Clinic but I just wanted to say that getting to see a neurologist should not be this hard. Every other practice schedules in a reasonably quick timeframe except for Neurology 5 months out you have got to be kidding! Closed book Scheduling only makes everything harder for patients and when it comes to call backs no one calls back at least for the Nuerology department.

I hope I never have to go to the hospital for anything ever again but on the chance that I do... I'm coming here and that's...

Dr Jin was one of the main doctors handling my care while in the hospital. Her conversations with my family is the main reason they stopped advocating for me.

I was admitted to BSW Lakeway Hospital for nearly a week due to severe neck pain, left-side weakness/paralysis, and urinary retention. My primary care physician recommended hospitalization to manage pain, confirm a diagnosis, and determine a treatment plan. None of these happened, my condition worsened during my stay, and BSW sent me home in worse condition than I went in.

A male nurse gave me something to help with pain and then started to put in a bladder catheter. In the process he touched me inappropriately and then laughed as I squirmed unable to move away.

At one point I stopped breathing. With my lips turning blue, my mom shook me and slapped my face until I started breathing again. At this point I wasn’t on any monitors and can’t imagine what would have happened had my mom not been by my side.

Next a doctor came in and announced they didn’t believe I was actually in pain, they thought I was faking it. They refused to give me more pain medication. There were a few more tests they had ordered and said they would continue with what was ordered just to be sure but were no longer looking for a root cause. For almost a week, I laid in that same bed in severe pain. I couldn’t even lift my head off the pillow.

At one point the nurses told my family that a neurosurgeon was coming to talk with us. My family wouldn’t leave the room all day thinking we finally found something and they wanted to hear the news. Instead, late in the evening, a very young, nervous nurse rolled in an iPad and said ‘someone might call me’ and that I needed to answer it. I received a call and was told my doctor ordered a psych eval on me. He demanded I get out of bed and stand in the middle of the room so he could clearly see me. In severe pain, my husband helped me lift my head off the pillow and I stood in the middle of the room holding a heart monitor in one hand and my bag of pee from my bladder catheter in the other. My mom and husband sat in shock as they watched. Following the eval, my family cussed me out for faking my pain.

The hospital also refused to give me the heart medication I had been on for years causing me to have 3 cardiac episodes while there of which they said nothing about other than pushing fluids as fast as they could to get my heart rate under control. At one point a nurse literally came running in to check on me but said she couldn’t give me anything.

I was sent home from the hospital with no diagnosis, unbearable pain, unable to pee, hardly able to use my left side, and no direction of what I needed to do next. I was left with severe depression and on long term disability from work.

It took months before I had the courage to find another doctor and honestly tell them about the pain I was dealing with. It turned out that I had issues in my neck that were all visible on the initial MRI but the doctors at BSW Hospital assured me was not the cause of my pain

To make matters worse, BSW sent my account to collection. I have been making regular payments along with automatic monthly payments. When I set up the automatic payments, a BSW employee assured me that would keep my account out of collections but it did not. Do not trust anything BSW says.

BSW is not a safe hospital for women. BSW does not listen to their patients and does not help patients. This hospital caused more damage to me than good. They destroyed my support system leaving me alone when I was in severe pain and unable to function. BSW hospital should...

I have had a lot of questions regarding my recent stay at our local hospital, Lakeway Regional Medical Center. This hospital has had nothing but negative press since it opened a little over a year ago and I, personally, decided that I would never go there. On Sunday, March 23, I found myself in rapidly deteriorating health and ended up at LRMC, the thought being that I could have them stabilize me and then transfer me to a "real" medical center.

As a retired surgeon, I consider myself a discriminating consumer of medical services (AKA difficult patient), so when I say that what I experienced at the Lakeway hospital was totally over the top medical care, I know the difference between good and mediocre medical care. They recognized that I had a serious problem and were on it immediately. The cardiologist, Dr. David Baldacchino, was there within minutes and diagnosed a massive pulmonary embolism even though I had a very atypical presentation. I was started on heparin and taken directly to the pulmonary scanner which confirmed the diagnosis. This was followed by a cardiac echo and numerous other tests. Dr. Baldacchino was there with me for about three hours until all the tests were done and I was in stable condition. The equipment there was state of the art and the technicians were both competent and professional.

On the medical floor, the rooms were spacious and clean. The staff, with only a few exceptions, were competent, professional and compassionate. The hospital food was actually quite exceptional and, get this, they don't have set meals, but rather a room service menu with about 20+ selections for breakfast, lunch or dinner that can be ordered any time from 7 AM to 7 PM. The meals generally arrived within 30 minutes.

The hospitalists were very good, unlike what you find in the Seton and St. David's healthcare systems, and the discharge doctor actually spent about a half an hour explaining things to me and answering questions at the time of discharge. The real surprise came when the hospital CEO arrived the morning of my discharge on Saturday morning to ask me about my hospital stay and for any suggestions on how to improve care. She spent spent more than 30 minutes with me.

The condition that I had carries about a 50% mortality. I credit the physicians and staff of Lakeway Regional Medical Center with saving my life and will be forever in their debt for that. Folks, this is not the hospital that you have been hearing about in the rumor mills and local media. I would recommend this hospital without reservation for all but major trauma and neurosurgery which are not taken...