Stanford medical center II

In a previous post, I described the disastrous adventures of a friend of some considerable years, whose broken hip was diagnosed by Stanford as shingles. It was a full week after the fracture before he had surgery to replace the hip.

He is at home now, walking a little, but still weak. Considering the care he got at Stanford, he is lucky to be alive.

Not content with botching their initial treatment, Stanford recently contacted him to see about making an appointment for his hysterectomy. Hey people, did you notice that pronoun? HIM!

My initial take on this story was that Stanford might be a good place to go if you needed a heart transplant, but not otherwise. I think even that assessment may be far too generous. You can probably even get better heart transplant treatment elsewhere nowadays. Go to Stanford only if you have no other choice whatever!

Stanford medical center: appalling!

Our friend Alan is in his 80s, probably, and although the mind is strong, the body is not what it once was. He fell from bed not long ago, and broke his hip. Mostly still asleep, he didn’t know he was hurt, and got back into bed.

It was noon by the time he reached Stanford medical center, where he waited eleven hours (!!!) before someone glanced at his X-ray and told him he had shingles. 11pm: they walked him to the door, took back their wheelchair and said good-bye. The only good thing about this story is that there happened to be a volunteer there, someone who helps Chinese who have language problems. She helped get Alan and his wife to their car and away.

By the time they got home, it was clear that home was not the place to be. They called 911… I didn’t hear the details of that next bit of adventure.

Once an official diagnosis exists in writing, it is virtually impossible to get it reconsidered. It was several days later, during which Alan suffered hallucinations from the cocktail of shingles drugs, that someone, apparently at the professor level at Stanford, wondered why there was no progress. She looked at the X-ray once again and realized that he had a broken hip.

After a cycling accident that broke my clavicle, my own experience with Stanford  customer care was hardly better than this, though they did at least diagnose the problem correctly. If you need a heart transplant, Stanford is the place to go, but for anything less, it seems like a really good idea to find somewhere else.

A man of some considerable years who falls and complains about hip pain? Diagnosed as shingles? You can certainly understand why people sue for malpractice!