Albany Medical Center

When my daughter was hospitalized with a broken neck and back, the care she received could not have been better. Fantastic doctors and staff. Kudos.

Beyond awful… The clerical staff at this abattoir is a new level of unprofessional. The ER is reminiscent of downtown Kabul – or the Confederate hospital in Gone With The Wind. There is a perpetual crowd of patients wandering in every conceivable direction and very little medicine being practiced. The Emergency Department IS the emergency… The problem systemwide with AMC is it has people who type and answer phones for a living making medical judgements. Don’t dream of complaining. This being New York, the concept of an independent patient advocate is about a century away. What your complaint is likely to get you is a snide scolding from some PR stooge (I think his name was Klute) whose position must have come complete with tiara and ball gown. Drive safely (but fast) to Saint Peter’s.

I really would prefer to rate the hospital higher but one item caused the lower review. First I’ll say that our experience was very good. A family member was in for serious cancer surgery. Every one we worked with was efficient and courteous. We are so far very happy with the medical center. However, one thing turned us off. when the family member was finished with surgery and recovery and back settled in his room we were informed that TV service was available for $ 5.50 a day! To the family, that was unheard of for a first class hospital to expect of patients! In addition, the family member wasn’t settled in the room until about 10PM but sorry, had to pay for a full days service! Also, in order to get the service he had to make a phone call and spend tons of time with a representative with a lengthy talk about his charge card etc! Maybe to some I’m nitpicking but I still believe it’s not acceptable! PapaT

Stay AWAY at all costs. Horrific parking, no communication between any of the staff, and apathetic nurses

I can’t judge the E.R. my father went there twice direct admissions from both Saratoga and Ellis Hospital. Both times the physicians and staff were curious and kept us informed of his condition. The Drs. Preform procedures other local hospitals don’t do so patients can stay local rather than go to a major city.

This was a pretty poorly run ER. We walked in, had no idea what to do — there was no sign in sheet, no one telling you where to go; just tons of people sitting around, looking as clueless as us. After about 15 minutes (it took this long to get someone’s attention), they told us to wait. One guy was in a lot of pain and had been waiting for over an hour. He was walking around to distract himself from the pain, and this EXTREMELY aggressive man who worked there actually threatened to call the police if he wouldn’t sit down. Talk about escalating a situation. He actually called the police and made the situation way worse than it needed to be. I could not believe how unprofessional he was. It was as if he was looking to pick a fight. Note to self — never come to this ER again.

This is the worst hospital I have ever been too. I had internal bleeding and they made me wait 5 hours without ever seeing a doctor and for the last 3, I was the only person in the waiting room. I complained several times and no one cared they just said sit down we’ll let you know. I finally got fed up and left. They were so unprofessional, dismissive and cold.

If you have children, and you have an accident at the house. Baby gets hurt, never take them to Albany Medical Center AMC. You take your kid to the ER they will call the police on you if you don’t agree with the doctor. They will order extended unnecessary tests and get you arrested if need be.
It’s not a good place for parents. Your child’s hygiene n proper diet is not guaranteed either. My son is 3 month old n can’t have any dairy n they fed him external formula. Very rude and irresponsible staff and arrogant doctors.
Never returning. I will go to St Peters.

I am a former employee and proud that I was able to do my residency here. Overall, the staff was friendly, helpful and kind to patients and adhered to the highest standards as far as I could see. I really believe this is the finest hospital in upstate NY!
An aside, the food in the cafeteria is decent and the pizza excellent! The 24 hour Dunkin Donuts is great when the café is closed overnight, but I do think we should have more options, maybe Subway or TCBY.

In a world where fashion trumps function, sometimes there is a price to pay.
Tight pants come with the territory in punk rock. As I grow older, so does unwanted hair. Long story short, ingrown hair compacted by rocker pants leads turns to small infection turns to raging infection. I could get extra punk points and let it spread to my blood stream, or get it checked now. When you load into a show 12 hours before you play you can afford a few hours in the ER.
Check in was pretty quick here. I ate Thai food about a half hour before my arrival so by the time I hit the lobby I was ready to blow. What a shit storm it was. Bathroom was nice. Low profile seats. Plus they provided free containers for urine tests. Bonus! And I didn’t have to buy anything like most public bathrooms.
After a two plus hour wait my patience and faith in the health care system were both being challenged. This place is a demographic melting pot. Even the incarcerated prisoner was representing! I gave him the approval nod, so if this night goes awry I know I got a friend on the inside.
Talk about a sensory assault! The sights, sounds, and smells of these place leave you longing for more. Remember that one night you wish you could live over and over again? Well for me, two words: emergency room.
Staff were friendly considering the barrage of bullshit they must endure. God bless these people. I would be horrible at this job.
One doctor was a SUPER BABE. The unholy fantasies I had in our brief moments together may end me up in the same room as my friend in the orange jump suit.
Then they numbed me, cut me, drained me, ultrasound, wick, and antibiotics.
Glad BJ reminded me to Unilocal review this joint or I would have had zero fun here.

Wonderful establishment !! We took my 19 month old son here and we were very well taken care of. We were seen right away and everyone was so helpful and nice. Thanks, AMC!

I so respect everthing about this medical center. Both my son and mom were patient’s here and the staff were all top notch! They not only were there for my mom and son.
They were there for All of us as a family.
I will never forget that.
Never.

This review is for Albany Medical College OBGYN center.
— The service is VERY Impersonal, you feel like you’re going via a drive through as you get a different doctor every time, and most of the times you get students still doing their residency so experience is very low.
— Some docs we dealt with were on the dry side, with no feelings. They treat you like you are a number.
— They asked us to do tests that we later found out were unnecessary, and without disclosing that insurance won’t be covering it. For that particular test alone we paid $ 509 out of pocket and we had one of the best PPO insurances.
— Frontdesk staff often grumpy
Luckily we moved out of town and delivery was performed somewhere else.
I do NOT recommend this place. Better find an OBGYN that is more personal and that can spend enough time with you and not treat you like a number or that don’t try to figure out how to milk money from your insurance.

REVIEW FOR SURGICAL WAITING ROOMS ONLY:
For a private hospital, they should be ashamed of the bad design of the waiting rooms outside of the surgical wing (which by the way, is in the basement, another design snafu.
The «new» surgery wing in the basement brags about all the new equipment etc. which of course is great. However, the architect who designed waiting-​room didn’t take into account modern technology:
1. Lack of AC outlets.
2. Lack of comfortable couches and chairs for extended waiting.
3. Lack of cellular service to communicate with family and friends.
4. Constant noise.
5. The need for separate rooms for cellular calls.
6. Lack of decent ventilation.
7. Terrible wifi service (never works).
8. The patient listing (s) on the lone TV is of a horrific design; hard to read, hard to follow: all around bad design.
9. Color choices (color psychology) for paint and fabric is bland and provokes sadness and despair (two things you do not want to feel while waiting for someone in surgery).
10. Signage prohibiting cellular calls and ring tones inside the main waiting room (assuming you have a phone that can even get cellular service).
11. What’s the deal with all the women targeted magazines? Men wait in waiting rooms too.
12. Bathroom is dirty. Also, you’d think a hospital would have sanitary seat covers for the toilets – nope, not this hospital.
13. Anti-​bacterial soap dispensers around the hospital are frequently empty.
14. It’s a sad state of affairs when the NYC Subway has a better PA system than a hospital.
If any place should provide a warm, comforting atmosphere it should be the waiting-​room for family members.
Assuming hospital executives are reading this: Take a hint from the exceptional waiting rooms at Columbia/​NY Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. Albany: You should be ashamed and embarrassed of this poor design in what you’d call a state-​of-​the-​art hospital in New York State’s capital.

Photo posted of filthy ventilation grate from my grandson’s room in pediatrics taken in June 2013. Label states Date of Last Service as March 2010! Awful!

Generally agree with Chris B.‘s review. A close family member was here for a severe injury. The ICU nurses were good but we had to deal with a socially and medically inept resident (Charles Lu) who was extremely unhelpful. At one point, our family member had inappropriate bleeding from several sites on the body which he dismissed as unimportant. Eventually we were able to convince other people in the ICU to take care of the situation but it was quite unpleasant to have a doctor hinder and dismiss treatment.
It seems the modus operandi here is to push people out of the proper unit into inappropriate but less ‘popular’ units as quickly as possible and on the weekends when family members have no one to contact regarding the matter. Please be aware of this during your stay.
The family member spent time in the acute rehabilitation unit and the doctor there (Dr. Forrest) is very unprofessional and unhelpful. He could not talk to family members in a coherent way or even finish his sentences before walking out on the family. He is also unwilling to help family members obtain future therapy sessions because he feels that if the patient has not recovered certain abilities in the AMC’s rehab unit, they will not regain them afterwards. This is a very distressing and uninformed sentiment for a Dr. in charge of rehabilitation. At one point, our family member’s roommate needed some immediate medical attention but the doctor would not respond to his pages. The therapists in the unit do seem to do a good job and actually care about the patient, unlike their unit’s doctor.
There are a handful of doctors and residents here that really care about their patients and work with them. The nurses were also generally caring and serious about their job. The doctors, though, mostly glance at the patient for 5 seconds and then charge more than $ 200 for that glance.

I once thought that Saratoga Hospital was the worst in the region. I stand corrected. Urgent Care sent me here, although at first the physicians assistant I talked with seemed hesitant because he thought the quality at Albany Med had gone down substantially. Yeah, no kidding.
Arrived at the ER at around 1:30 pm. The way they set up intake is extremely inefficient. I had to move between 4 different stations next to each other for different things. Meantime, this young guy was trying to take my blood pressure and temperature while I’m at the 4^th station explaining my problem. Seemed like a whole bunch of hurry up and wait.
The kid who rushed to take my blood pressure and temperature called me to take me back to my room only to find there was no bed or seating of any kind, so he took me back to the waiting room and let several people go ahead of me while I waited another 30 minutes. In the waiting room, all I could hear was him complaining about how bored he was and cracking jokes. Extremely unprofessional.
Ended up having to explain my problem to several different people because there seems to be an extreme lack of communication. It took forever to get my tests done, but once I had my final test completed I was sitting around for another 4 hours doing absolutely nothing but waiting in my room, freezing cold, and bored to death. Finally at 9pm I asked to be discharged. A doctor then came in to talk to me about all the doom and gloom things that might be wrong with me and that I should stay, but I wasn’t getting the feeling that anybody was reviewing my tests, and frankly this was the 4^th doctor I had talked to, so I wondered if any one person knew what was going on. No one had come into my room to explain anything and I felt so confused.
Finally got out of there at 9:30 and felt like I was a co-​pay short and none the wiser about what was actually wrong with me. I should have gone to St. Peter’s.

I came here to the ER for post surgery complications and ended up staying for a few days afterwards. Due to the extreme severity of the problem I had, I did not wait at all once in the ER. I was immediately taken in and taken care of. Shortly after, my doctor who had performed my first surgery came in and talked to me about what was going on. Long story short, I needed to get a second emergency surgery under general anesthesia. They took background info, vitals, and asked me a lot of pre-​op questions then got me into surgery about 2 – 3 hours later. It was surprisingly quick considering I just stumbled in with no warning.
Post-​op my pain was managed well. This has more to do with the anesthesiologists than the hospital but it is worth mentioning. They are affiliated.
I had my own room with tv, which I had to pay for, and a decently comfortable bed. The room was kept clean and most of the staff were friendly. Some were extremely rude and obnoxious, but every place has their gems.
My pain was managed well with medicine and most of my requests were answered. When I needed something, they were usually good about getting it for me. Additionally the food was pretty decent. Some of the cons:
1) Some staff members were extremely rude and inconsiderate. And not «I had a bad day so I’m taking it out on you», but the rude which is like «I have no manners and I don’t care what you think of me or how I do things». I understand how stressful the job is, but there’s no reason to be ill-​mannered and obnoxious. And stop chewing gum in my ear when taking my vitals! Everytime! Oh and some nurses claimed you have to call for your meds or they won’t come, but some nurses came at the right time everytime with your meds without you calling for them. Were some lying? Either way it was annoying and made me feel like I was a nuisance.
2) The discharge process was clunky and it took forever. I waited almost 5 hours for my papers to be signed after it was already determined I was being discharged.
3) Some miscommunications between nurses and doctors occurred (nurses tell me one thing, doctors say the opposite) but that is more likely due to the clunky policies and procedures in place for the hospital.
4) The hospital technology and décor seem a bit outdated. My IV machine might have been the first one ever made, and the blood pressure machines had many problems. I’d be more worried if I was more reliant on them or was in worse health but it’s something to keep in mind.
5) Parking is atrocious. Get a ride if at all possible. The location of the hospital is also on New Scotland Ave which is a complete nightmare to drive on.
6) Pre-​op check in was SLOW for my first surgery. It ran 2 hours late and it’s like a maze navigating around the multiple rooms and processes for the check in. I’m not sure why there are two areas to go to and why it’s so slow but it was a pain.
7) I’m mentioning this for the nurses’ sake: they have to carry around these HUMONGOUS workstations on wheels to give you medicine and update your vitals while in a hospital room. This made things painfully slow and frustrating for both the nurses and myself. They have to move these huge things around (seriously you wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it) and they scan your bracelet and the medicine bar code to give it to you. Yeah I understand the need for this, but why not use a portable scanner? An iPad? SOMETHING to make them more mobile. The halls are too small for those big things and there are times that I waited 15 – 20 minutes in pain for my meds simply because there was a traffic jam with carts outside and then the scanner wouldn’t fit or work, or something else relating to the 400 pound anchor on wheels they needed to move around. Please fix this for their sake. There is no need to make patients and nurses suffer when there are easier ways to do things.
Overall, not a bad place to be stuck when sick. My problem wasn’t life threatening though so gauge your opinion on that fact.

Where do I start? The ER is unclean, unfriendly, inefficient, etc. Most of the staff looks and acts unprofessional. Wait time is always through the roof. Every time I have been there, it has been at least a five hour visit for problems that should not take more than two hours.
This is a sad excuse for, well, any kind of business.

I went to the ER for stomach pain and they got my info and vitals pretty fast. However I was waiting up to 2 hours till I was finally seen and there was all of 2 people waiting to be checked in.