Abbott Northwestern Hospital — Local services in Minneapolis

I have a couple of awful experiences with the Abbott ER. The last was when I presented with what I'm now comfortable calling angina. The ambulance took me there because of their abnormal EKG reading and my own watch's abnormal ECG, plus pain. I did not show any signs of anxiety, nor did I feel anxiety—and I told them that—but the doctor had the nurse breeze in with Ativan anyway. If a doctor believes that the symptoms may be cardiac related, it can actually be harmful to give Ativan, so the fact he gave it says something about what he was thinking about me. Later, I was diagnosed with atherosclerosis (heart disease), and the question for me is why a women's symptoms were so easily assigned to anxiety and not, say, to a possible heart condition? Especially when I am at midlife, am on an HRT patch, and I disclosed my strong family history of early cardiac disease and early death from it. Plus, the paramedics had done their own tests. The crazy thing is, I was far more calm and measured when I communicated that I did not like having that Ativan given to me than staff were in their responses.

This is not an isolated incident. Two years prior, I had presented to the same ER with a tingling throat and lips after my first COVID vaccination. I am not anti-vax, and I have a mast cell disorder, but the ER doctor nonetheless chose to resurrect old diagnoses in his notes (later, I looked at his notes to understand why he seemed so dismissive to me). Those include a personality disorder a psychiatrist erroneously gave me years ago, because there was a period of time when I had treatment-resistant depression and frequent suicidal ideation. Since then, I have had much better psychiatric care. I have an eight-year healthcare relationship with one of the state's best psychiatrists for treatment-resistant depression, and previous to him had another excellent psychiatrist, and both called it absurd to diagnose me with a personality disorder. As a therapist myself now, I also know that treatment-resistant depression can be confused with a personality disorder when a provider lacks diagnostic nuance, has a bias, or isn't thorough. When I had the right treatment, my suicidal ideation disappeared. So yes, what I had was treatment-resistant depression, which research shows is true of up to 50% of people with depression. The point is that though that diagnosis was decades old, the ER doctor dug it up out of a list of many diagnoses and chose to refer to it in his notes.

I say all of this because I want women to understand. According to Yale, "Now researchers are trying to figure out why. They have found that women often hesitate to get help because they tend to have more subtle heart attack symptoms than men — but even when they do go to the hospital, health care providers are more likely to downplay their symptoms or delay treating them. Health authorities say that heart disease in women remains widely underdiagnosed and undertreated, and that these factors contribute to worse outcomes among women and heightened rates of death from the disease."

I didn't have to develop atherosclerosis. But experiences like these at this ER are why I came to suppress concerns about my health, afraid these labels would be perpetuated through my entire life. Later, I didn't check AHA guidelines to confirm when my PCP practice kept saying my LDL and HDL were excellent—yet, as it turns out, when a person has a family history like mine, their LDL should be under 70 and mine was 100, 105. I could have been on a statin to prevent this disease—that is a reasonable path for someone with my family history, despite the fact that my diet is better than average and my weight and BMI at ideal levels. Now I have this disease and perhaps it can regress, but at present, heart disease...

I take my daughter to the daycare in the hospital and the security gaurds profile and harass me and her father on more than one occasion! We have ALWAYS ALWAYS been peaceful and we bother nobody when we go about our business yet we are still profiled, harrassed and humiliated. We have no reason to be anything but peaceful when we our daughter uses the daycare services.

TODAY her dad went to pick our daughter up and used the bathroom, two security guards followed him, checked on him in the bathroom (saw nothing wrong) yet waited for him outside and then LIED telling him he was on tresspass on his way out. He knew he was NOT on tresspass and contrinued to the daycare door and opened the door with his key card. The security guards embarrassingly walked the other way realising their mistake.

About a month ago, I was in the bathroom when a blonde female security guard LITERALLY kicked the door open!! I stopped and waited to see who it was and she showed her face and acted as if she "caught" me doing something wrong. She asked if I "had any buisness in the hospital" and I told her that I my daughter uses the daycare. She obviously felt stupid and left me alone.

When I was pregnant I took the Birthing classes located in the green building. The first day of the classes, I could not find it, a woman security gaurd again approached me, I was 7 months pregnant (I am 5'2, mind you) and she treated me as if I was some criminal ready to steal everything in that hospital. I asked her if she knew where the green building was and she had no idea, so she told me to "stay there" while she radioed somebody who did. Nobody answered her and I was late for that class so I ignored her and found it my damn self. I was not going to sit there and be treated like a criminal. She followed me.

There is doing your job and profiling people of color to harrass them based of your racial bias. YOU CAN DO YOUR JOB WITHOUT OBVIOUSLY TRYING TO HUMILATE PEOPLE OF COLOR FOR USING YOUR SERVICES! You need to RESPECT your patients and visitors with respect and dignity.

I am taking everyone from the community's experience, who has had a similar and down right DISGUSTING experience with the racist staff at Abbott and I am going to expose this establishment for treating its patients of color like garbage! I have noticed a disturbing pattern that Abbott staff treats American Indian and certain African American community members with such disrespect and refuses to properly give them care. Many members have had to visit hosptials in the suburbs to receive care for kidney infections, open infected wounds, cracked teeth, flu symptoms, ect. after being improperly treated at Abbott and/or racially profilled as if they are soley seeking drugs for their visible or obvious injuries/ailments. You can see for yourself in these comments alone, every person of color rates one star with a disgusting experience attached. Now imagine how many there are who do not rate or report their experience here?

How can you treat another human being this way? Because of your own pathetic racial bias, it's okay to make another human feel like a criminal or inadequate? To humiliate us in front of our families and deny us the health care we need and deserve! This is unacceptable and you will be exposed for the way you treat the people in the community who rely on you to give them care. You have got away with this dusgusting behavior in the past but not anymore. The people have had enough of the way...

I would give zero stars if I could. I drove my husband to the emergency department after a bad head injury with loss of consciousness. I should have called 911 from the scene but we were a few blocks from Abbott and I mistakenly thought the fastest way to get him care was to drive him there. They immediately took his insurance and checked him in and ordered a head CT, but then sent us to the waiting room to wait?! He had a head injury with loss of consciousness and was continuously bleeding from his nose. It took 1.5 hours just to get the CT scan. He was writhing in pain and confused. I called 911 twice from the waiting room. The paramedics that arrived were sympathetic and said that if it was their loved one, they would have taken him to another hospital from the start. Since their protocol was to transport patients to the nearest hospital and because he was already checked in as a patient here, they couldn’t help us. We waited 3.25 hours in the waiting room just to be taken back into the ED. My husband could have been bleeding into his head and died in the waiting room and no one would have known because no one checked on him once. I had to ask for blankets and ice for him, which they slowly and begrudgingly provided. The staff didn’t offer any basic cares or show any compassion. After 3.75 hours we were told that they didn’t get the correct images and that he needed to go for another CT. How many people die while waiting here?! At any other hospital a head injury trauma with loss of consciousness and confusion would have been treated right away. While we were waiting, a young woman, who was the victim of an assault, came in. I asked the person at the front desk to, “please get her a warm blanket and a glass of water.” He replied with contempt, “I know how to do my job.” In total, it took 4.5 hours just to see a doctor. My husband was never even evaluated by a nurse. He had open wounds that weren’t even looked at or cleaned. I would have left and taken him somewhere else but once he got the first CT, we were stuck because insurance wouldn’t have paid if we left. The care he received was shockingly unsafe and poor quality. I will never go to Abbot Northwestern again or any of their affiliated clinics. I would also like to note that the waiting room only had a couple of people in it and when we were taken back into the emergency room, most of the rooms were empty and nurses were sitting around at the desk so it’s not even because they were busy. Once in a room, no one came into the room to even check on my husband. It took 4 hours for someone to check his vital signs and the person who did so did not sanitize their hands upon entering which is standard in healthcare. There was zero nursing care. His open wound were left uncleaned with gravel in them and skin hanging off. No one besides the doctor introduced themselves. No one gave us updates or let us know what was happening. No one asked us if we needed anything. In total, we were in the emergency room for 6 hours and had less than 15 minutes total interaction with staff. We were awake all night, hungry, thirsty, cold. No one even said, “do you need anything.” No one ever offered pain medicine even though he has multiple facial fractures. They didn’t even show us where the door was when we we’re finally...