Yale New Haven Hospital — Local services in New Haven

Yale caused my quality of life to suffer long-term. From my own experience between the years of 2017-2019 and more recent experiences of other loved ones in my life, I can say: Yale treats mental health patients or physical care patients with mental illness diagnoses like complete trash. My personal experiences are from before the COVID-19 pandemic, so I have no sympathy for extenuating conditions during those times. At Yale, if you have a mental illness diagnosis, you will be identified with it. Even if you are not visiting for mental health reasons, if you have anxiety, the physical health problem you are experiencing will be labeled as anxiety and your physical care needs will not be met. As a young teen, I found myself at Yale after suffering a seizure for the first time. It was an isolated incident but at the time I also was struggling with severe anxiety and panic attacks. I was on high doses of medications (which Yale put me on previously and have appalled other doctors I have seen since I became an adult) and at the pediatric unit, the doctors cold-turkey stopped my medication, fearing it would complicate the problems I was having. This would be understandable if they had kept up with me to prevent withdrawal symptoms as needed. My mother had to try to chase down nurses to help me as I experienced extreme withdrawals from my prescriptions as a 14-year-old. I have looked back into my medical records, none of this was recorded and the withdrawals which they did not supervise were labeled as panic attacks and other mental health symptoms. The combination of the seizure and withdrawals have caused long-term memory damage. They promised to set me up with a neurologist but never did. Because of their negligence, I cannot remember my late grandmother, I have very very few childhood memories, and to this day I have poor memory as a young adult. They let a minor go through horrible withdrawals from the inappropriately high doses of medication (started by Yale) which made the initial problems worse, with little medical attention and zero medical follow up. I do not remember much of this time, besides for pain and what my mother has told me over the years. This is before COVID-19, stress on the medical system from the pandemic does not apply as an excuse. Most recently, someone I love dearly visited for a scarily high heart rate, transported via ambulance. They wrote his symptoms off as his anxiety and pressured him to take medication for his anxiety, which did not help the problem. He has since seen a cardiologist who is thankfully working to address the problem and is actually taking medical steps to fix it. I get that this was during COVID-19 and they are stressed, but they took a medical emergency and turned it into a mental health problem. The moral of the story is don't go to Yale, especially if you have preexisting mental health problems. I can't get my memory back and I wish we had tried to sue back then since I'm sure it's too late now, especially because my medical records show 'they did no wrong.' I have been needing to say that for a long long time. The bias against mental health is...

This place is a nightmare...I've never seen something run so horribly. Whoever is managing this place should be fired. This place is almost like one giant scam. They make sure they have like a dozen valets working during the day so they can park your cars as quickly as possible, thus checking your car in and starting the meter as soon as they can. Once you get inside, everything slows down. The main desk was understaffed as hell, and they made my mom, who was there in a wheelchair for surgery, actually wait in line with everyone else to check in. I'd love to meet the genius that thought the pre-op patients should have to wait to check in behind the people who are there in line to get visitors passes or to just ask a question or something. Just brilliant. The line was like 20 people long, and they only had 2 people on the desk, one of whom was also handling the phone. When we finally got to pre-op, we realized that the hospital had screwed up scheduling, and had her arrive much earlier than she should've for her surgery. They didn't move her up to the surgery wing for another 3-plus hours, and didn't start the surgery until a full 5 and a half hours after we had arrived. Their phone system was also down for many hours that night, so I was unable to call the post-op area of the hospital to actually make sure that my mom had made it through surgery okay. I had to just assume everything had gone well. They also gave me ZERO notice whatsoever when it was time to pick my mother up, the staff just handed her a phone and told her to call her ride to say she was ready for pickup. While we were waiting for her to go up to surgery, we witnessed patients actually stuck in the waiting room for over an hour while their rides were waiting outside the entire time, just because the staff had somehow run out of wheelchairs! HOW DOES A HOSPITAL RUN OUT OF WHEELCHAIRS? You would think they would have enough. But that's just typical for places like this. They spend on unimportant things, like decorations, the aesthetics of the hospital's interior, all the fancy cafes and cafeterias they have inside. They skimp on the important things, like staffing, their phone system, and medical supplies like wheelchairs. This makes the experience terrible for everyone, the staff included, and whoever is involved in the day-to-day management of this hospital should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. I hope it's just simple incompetence, but the cynic in me has to wonder if the hospital's service is slowed down on purpose. That way, visitors spend the maximum amount of time there, which translates to more money spent at the hospital's many coffee shops and food places, the gift shop, and on valet parking, as well as being able to keep the patient at the hospital as long as possible in order to bill their insurance company for as much as humanly possible. I legitimately have to wonder at this point, because it's hard to believe that one of the most acclaimed hospitals in the country is this incompetent, and not doing...

I write this review out of immense gratitude towards this great institution, Yale New Haven Hospital! I lost my father to COVID in October of 2020 when my parents were happily and independently living in India. I requested my mom to come with me after my dad's demise and she came along with me to the US. Her life had come to a screeching halt after my father left, who she was completely dependent upon.

Unfortunately, My mother was diagnosed with cancer in April of 2021 while she was in California visiting my sister. We were all distraught hearing this and we asked her to come here for her treatment at Yale. My parents were successfully able to lead a comfortable life in India, but she had no source of income nor any medical insurance when she came to the US. We scheduled our first appointment at Yale with Dr. Judson, a head and neck surgeon who had operated upon my wife before. During our appointment, I met Shannandola at Yale, who worked for Yale's administration and said we would have no choice, but to go for self pay. She humbly guided me to apply for Yale free care. This was a shot in the dark and we had so much on our mind that we did not even hope for anything after applying for it. I received a call from Iris at Yale Financial department regarding my application and she guided me on the additional documents required for the application to be considered. I was able to promptly provide her with all the documents that she requested and within hours of our conversation, I heard back from her giving me a verbal approval for my mother's free care at Yale and all it's subsidiary hospitals and clinics. This felt like a call from God. I literally started crying on the call and we all hugged and started to cry out of joy after the call as a family. My mother was relieved beyond words could express!

My mother underwent a successful surgery that lasted 13 long hours with 3 surgeons working tirelessly to remove her cancer. She underwent chemo and radiation therapy at Yale along with physical and speech therapy. this was all done at 0 charge to her. My mother fought like a brave soldier and was working hard to recover from the strong side affects from the radiation. She developed severe aspiration pneumonia and we lost our mother unfortunately due to the complication from the radiation in September of this year. My family and I are incredibly grateful to Yale for all that they have done for us. Sickness, Life and death are beyond our control unfortunately, but she was relieved from a major financial burden by this kind and benevolent...