Zucker Hillside Hospital — Local services in New York

Came here initially the first time with an amazing review. Dr. Li seemed really skilled in her craft and understood exactly what was wrong with me after I spoke with her on my OCD compulsions and other mental issues. She and her colleague were both very well-spoken and made me feel validated for having my mental issues for so long, diagnosed but untreated. They even prescribed me a month of Zoloft to help me get started on my Psychiatric journey. Now, I UNDERSTAND this isn’t a Psychiatrist’s office. I’m very well aware of it, and came into here expecting nothing but a few referrals when I walked in. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the first visit went, and was extremely eager to get on the right track with this hospital to get myself more clinical help from their other offices (they have an OCD Clinic specifically on site.) The 2nd time visiting however was dreadful. I didn’t catch the name of the 2nd man who I was introduced to when I came in, but I truly hope he gets fired. First off, I don’t understand in the first place why each time you visit the offices you’re given a different doctor. Not only does it make the passing of info from doctor to doctor realistically extremely confusing, but it also means that the sympathy and understanding you garnered for explaining your issues to the first doctor will be completely nonexistent the second time you visit with the new person. That’s exactly how I felt being set up the 2nd time. The doctor was extremely condescending to me, making me feel guilty for stopping my Zoloft as it had been making me feel extremely anxious towards the end of the first month. He also made it very clear to explain things to me dumbed-down (like I haven’t already been dealing with this my entire life, have taken mental health courses and already understand this) recapping the 5 main “key-points” about mental health for the entire “checkup” appointment. He urged me to make sure I got myself into the OCD Clinic as soon as I possibly could because there’s a 30 day waiting period where, if you don’t get in during those 30 days, they essentially have no reason to take you in past that point (or something to that avail). That’s also absurd to me as it took multiple weeks just to get in contact with the OCD Clinic due to their main phone line being an Unknown number for some strange reason. This whole process could have been much easier with better communication. I wasn’t informed fully prior that every checkup and visit would be with a different doctor, leaving me very confused when upon returning I expected to talk to Dr. Li (the doctor who prescribed me the meds) about how they had affected me over that month. While I’m grateful for the Zoloft prescription so I can use that in my future endeavors to talk about with a real Psychiatrist, I just felt this whole situation was very cruddy and I’ll probably just take their recommendations to find a genuine Therapist & Psychiatrist for myself sometime soon. It could have been a lot worse but that 2nd doctor really irked me with the way he spoke to...

It was a hard decision to come to this hospital, but what disappointed me during my four day stay that took place last Friday was no heads up on how to use the shower, no heads up about when to get discharged considering it was a holiday weekend by giving me the option of staying or trying DBT elsewhere or going home. While entering my unit, half of the unit was closed due to every patient required to take a Covid 19 test. Not only I was forced to wait until all Covid 19 tests came back negative for nearly 2 days to have the entire floor unit I was in be fully accessible for all patients and for visitors to come during visiting hours, I was forced to stay until Tuesday after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Another disappointment was no adequate warning when I was in the emergency room section spending last Thursday night there due to intrusive unwanted thoughts was that Zucker Hillside will be short staffed and if you decide to go, you would have to wait until Tuesday to be discharged. Had they told me that Thursday night or early Friday morning, my anxiety would have lessened the minute I stepped foot in my unit. If I had my own room without a roommate, not to say I had a bad one, it would have enabled me to have more privacy of what I feel comfortable wearing. I was disappointed that I wasn't assigned a psychologist with me to speak to for as long as I could regarding my mental state between Friday morning & Monday evening. I was disappointed for having to get blood drawn twice for blood tests, which I always dreaded doing. Why the staff had to do blood work on me twice, I'll never know.

The pluses were meeting new patients who were nice and nurses who were nice. Louise did an outstanding job with her wit and always made sure I took my night pills and asked me about my mental state. During the stay, I was physically fatigued with leg and chest aches but an improvement to my mental state with exercising methods into helping me be at a more adequate mental state, which I am grateful for. I loved the music & art therapy together and meditation. The visiting times were reasonable. Sue, the social worker, was very helpful and nice to me in helping me with the discharge forms and wanted to know more about me. An assigned schedule was a plus, but had I received from Dr. Mendelowitz a schedule to follow on who to see while he was on vacation during the Martin Luther King weekend with more structure, I'd probably be more mentally organized and would be more prepared on who I must see. Whether it be an employee with social work experience, a part time psychologist, or the cleaning people to clean the room I was in because the day I got discharged, no nurses warned me that I'd smell bleach or disinfectant late Tuesday morning with custodians coming into the room at a certain time. Just some failures of communication...

The doctors there were alright. The reason for the horrible review was that they try to CHEAT YOU out of your money! Everytime I went for an appt, I would ask the receptionist for the amount of copay, I would pay said amount, and receive a receipt. The first several weeks were fine. However towards the end of my visits to Zucker Hillside ( I went there for several months), I began receiving nonsense medical bills from them. They were charging me twice as much, sometimes even billing me for appointments I didn't even have! The first time I called the hospital, they said it was their mistake and that I should just ignore the bills. I thought that was the end... but no, the BILLS KEPT COMING!!! I kept calling the hospital, and talking in person at the hospital but apparently no one knew how to fix the issue, they simply kept referring me to different workers-- it was an endless cycle of getting nowhere. I kept telling the hospital that I did pay my copay whenever I saw the doctor and I had the receipts to prove it but that was to no avail. I also received many different responses from the workers I talked to on the phone. One said that I was billed twice the amount of my copay because "I received DIFFERENT TREATMENT" but all my sessions were exactly the same!!! I would go in, have a chat with the doctor and leave-- there was no additional support/ help whatsoever. Another time, they said that the cost of the copay went up-- but that didn't make sense either because I would be billed $x one appt, then next appt $2x, then the appointment after that, back to $x. The workers were MAKING UP FALSE REASONS! Then I soon began receiving NOTICES FROM DEBT COLLECTORS. This point I was beyond infuriated, I COULDN'T BELIEVE A HOSPITAL WOULD TREAT ITS PATIENTS THIS WAY! I tried looking for contact info on the hospital website but it turns out... they don't list any contact info/ resources about bills other than of course, pay your bills. I kept filling out the response forms asking for the billing address and the hospital took their sweet time responding back to me. And when I did get a response, they gave me the address of a PO box. I then sent out another response form demanding the address of the billing office and not a freaking PO box and they just responded with the hospital's address. The bills mysteriously stopped SEVERAL MONTHS after I had stopped going to Zucker Hillside, maybe because I kept pestering them about the nonsense bills. PLEASE DO NOT GO TO THIS HOSPITAL --- THEY WILL CHEAT YOU OUT OF...