Tag: medical care

 

Thank you for your emails and comments about Fanya, Sophia’s mother.  She is doing better, and was released from the hospital tonight.  

Fanya’s room was located in the Saperstein Critical Care Tower, which was opened last year after entrepreneur and philanthropist David Saperstein and his wife Suzanne made the largest donation to Cedars-Sinai in the Medical Center’s history.

“The Sapersteins have accepted a crucial role in the reinvention of our campus by providing us with the means to build a state-of-the-art critical care tower,” said [hospital President and CEO Thomas M. Priselac when he received the donation]. “The Suzanne and David Saperstein Critical Care Tower will combine the latest monitoring technology with staffing to provide the most fragile patients with the most sophisticated care available.”

The Saperstein Critical Care Tower is clearly important for Los Angeles.

Annual hospital admissions countywide are up 20 percent in the past 10 years and seven hospitals have closed since 2003, according to a new report funded by The California Endowment.  West L.A. hospitals have been hard pressed to keep pace with demand, particularly institutions like Cedars that draw patients from a wider area. Population growth, on top of an aging demographic more likely to become seriously ill, have only exacerbated the situation, said  Dr. Paul Silka, [medical chief of staff], noting that Cedars often has long waiting lists to schedule elective surgery.

While Cedars-Sinai Medical Center clearly has top-notch doctors and medical equipment, I was not impressed with the human aspect of the patient care.   For example, why did no one come out to tell us how the surgery went?  Why did no one tell us that Fanya was taken back to ICU half an hour earlier?  Why were nurses laughing loudly with each other all night, waking up the patients in INTENSIVE CARE?   Or why was Fanya not fed for fourteen hours?  Even though the doctor gave the order to give her food, the nurse forgot to inform the nutrition department.  It took Sophia three and a half hours of fighting with everyone to get Fanya some food after her angioplasty.  Is this the bad effect of “Grey’s Anatomy,” where the personal lives of the staff are more important than those of the sick people?  Like in many other big-city hospitals, the basic concerns of the patient and his family seem to be of secondary consideration.   

Nothing symbolizes this better than the Saperstein Critical Care Tower itself.  As you can see from the above photo, the $110 million dollar facility may be “state-of-the-art,” but someone forgot to put up a sign telling patients and their families which building it is and WHERE THE ENTRANCE IS LOCATED.