Boulder Community Hospital

I went one time. ONCE. They wrote down the wrong insurance card and blamed me. So I received excessive phone calls from them then, but the phone calls did not stop after that was fixed. They’re all automated too so they’re not very personable. They’re trying to use the most modern technology, but I don’t want to talk to a computer. Don’t go there if you don’t want to be continually followed, called, and blamed. This has been going on since July. Otherwise the doctors were really nice and knowledgable.

Just had knee replacement surgery. Very shoddy service by the hospital. Would not go there ever again.
The Good:
1. Dr. Koch and the RNs are very good. Dr. Koch is meticulous, patient, and answers all questions. Does good work. The RNs and aides are very friendly and courteous and take good care of patients.
The Bad and the Ugly:
1. Boulder Community Hospital (BCH) seems to overbook patients and don’t have rooms for them. I waited almost about 4 hours in post-​op before I was taken to my recovery room. Believe me, this wait seemed even longer when you consider you’ve had major surgery!
2. In spite of my asking several times I did not get my lunch till about 3.30 pm on the day of the surgery. Terrible way to treat a patient who’s just had surgery and has not eaten all day!
3. Setting up the Home Physical Therapy fell through the crack also — the hospital failed to arrange for this in a timely manner. The result, I did not get any therapy for about 4 days after the surgery. I’m supposed to have gotten it a day or 2 after surgery.
4. I had a similar bad experience with the same hospital during a shoulder surgery 5 months ago; the post-​op nurse kept bad-​mouthing the Democratic party! Pretty insensitive, especially when I would think BCH has some kind of policy that discourages staff from making political statements in the recovery room.
All in all, the hospital seems to focus more on making money as a business more than caring for the patient. I will never go back to this hospital. If your doctor does surgery elsewhere, I suggest you opt for that.

No hospital is ever going to get great reviews, medicine is called a practice for a reason. There is always going to be mistakes and there are always going to be amazing saves. That being said, they saved my dad’s life. My dad dropped dead in front of me around 10 pm while I was visiting him. I called 911 and had to start CPR. The ambulance arrived and shocked my dad 2 times. They rushed him to this hospital. Once there, the ER doctor, think «Cardiac Alert» had been started while we were on the way to the hospital. This apparently meant that the heart team had been called in from home. I was told my dad was having a huge heart attack. I was so scared he was going to die. In no time the heart team and doctor, Dr. Holland, came in and took him the cardiac lab. They put a stint in his heart and within an hour he was stable and in the ICU. The doctor told me that they had to shock him three more times during the procedure but he was going to be fine and suffered little damage to his heart. A few days later he got to go home. They SAVED his life. It was only later and after reading about that hospital that I learned that they are know for treating heart attacks super quick and their survival rates are really high. Needless to say, I will always regard them and the paramedics as the people that my dad owes his life to.

This hospital, along with the help of boulder community almost killed my wife. They were unable to discover the 18″ blood clot in her leg along with a Pulmonary Embolism in her lung. They told her that it was stress and sent her home, Twice. We went to Boulder community instead where they told us to «Never come back.» We ignored that recommendation and went back anyways. It took them over a week of being persistent for them to finally run an ultrasound on my wife’s leg, but only after she began swelling in her leg.
Don’t go to these hospitals unless you want to die.

My husband and I decided to come here for the birth of our daughter due to the environmental focus of the hospital. We were excited because we were planning to use cloth diapers at home. However, they ran out of cloth on our last day and a half and had to use disposable diapers while we were there. Overall, the birth experience was pleasant. The other very negative thing about this hospital is the billing department. We had to get an x-​ray for my daughter and they charged more than DOUBLE what they said I would have to pay. When I called to ask, they basically said that their forms don’t have to be very specific because they can bill as they see fit and there is no retribution. I spoke with three different people (Becky, Rosie and Annesa (sp?)) and all of them were very rude, including the manger Aneesa. If this hospital plans to have people choose to go their for their services, then they need to correct their billing practices and they should fire the entire RUDE billing department.

Took my friend here when he broke his ankle. The staff and doctors were very professional and friendly. Thank you!

This was the worst hospital experience of my life! I am glad my injury was not more serious, otherwise I would’ve died on the table.
I fell off my bike in June and had to go to the ER. The ambulance calls and requests they take me in immediately and get an X-​Ray ASAP! I get wheeled in, specifically said I fell, and yes, I did hit my head on the pavement (but I had a helmet on, and the helmet cracked). Any idiot in the medical profession knows that the first hour of trauma is the most critical, and a patient needs to be under full observation during that time. That did not happen! Jesus Christ, what if my brain started swelling or something similar in nature? I was left completely alone on the table for almost a half hour. The very least they could have done is have a nurse hang out in there with me to calm me down and explain everything to me. Instead, there were several nurses just hanging out in the common area like it was social hour. It wasn’t until the New Yorker in me got very angry and called them out on it.
Then they treated me like I was some mentally ill psychiatric patient. I’m not mentally ill, I just demand quality care, like anybody else would. Literally, 10 feet away, that nurse I called out on (the one who was supposed to be taking consistent care of me) was talking sh*t about me right outside of my room; I could hear every word she was saying about me, about how I’m some East Coast bitch and they wanted to just get me out because I was such a nuisance. Totally unprofessional!
It cost me $ 3600 to get Vicodin, a crummy sling, and a disposable ice pack. Seriously, I think I would’ve been better off going to the Pharmaca across the street for self-​care. I never got to see my X-​Ray, never got to leave with a copy of my X-​Ray, demanded to see a doctor, got lied to and said there was no doctor on duty in the ER, and I only got to see a Physician’s Asssistant (who was also very rude to me), to which he replied «there’s nothing you can do about your broken shoulder.» Oh, I should also mention I left with the wrong patient’s information that visited the BCH three months prior to my accident. Seriously, that’s not cool.
I’ve lost faith in the Health Care (or should I say Health Neglect) Industry because of the ER staff here in Boulder. I was totally a victim of «Treat ‘em and street ‘em!» Sadly, my story isn’t the worst I’ve heard. Seriously, I hope Federal Intervention happens soon, because this ER is in serious need of a total staff transformation!

I wish I didn’t know this ER quite as well as I do, but I’m grateful that such a high quality ER is so close to my childhood home! They always take great care of me, I never have to wait long when it’s a true emergency, and the doctors and nurses actually listen to me when I tell them what’s going on. What a concept, right? Even the times I have gone in for a broken bone, or with friends who broke bones, we’ve never waited more than an hour for care. Even living in Golden I will have my husband drive me down there for ER care because I trust them to actually take care of me!
The last time I was in there with a real emergency, the doctor on call brought in a pile of textbooks, pulled up the stool, and told me all about my disease (which is awesome because I’ve met specialists who didn’t know anything about it!) then called around and found out the most recent theories on treatment for me. He probably saved my life more than just that one time by giving me an idea for prevention that I then took to my usual GP. My GP looked into it and got me started with the prescription, and I’ve been three years without an ER visit now! No specialist needed!

although my actual doctor’s practice is located in the hospital, and is good, the emergency room sort of sucks.
the waiting area is nice, and unlike most tiled, creepy waiting rooms… but the wait still takes forever (i think thats sort of normal though).
i went to the emergency room one night, after 7pm, upon experiencing an anaphylaxis type thing. they injected me with an epi-​shot then sent me home. like… within an hour. alone.
within 30 mins of being released, i started having uncontrollable shivers and my fever spiked to about 103. i obviously couldnt drive back to the hospital, so my dad had to fly out on a red-​eye from houston and drag my passed-​out body back to the emergency room.
after waiting another two hours in another line, i was admitted and put on multiple bags of IV fluid.
the nurse who was assigned to my room found out that my dad worked for exxon (via my insurance), and told him what a piece of shit he was for being in the oil business.
she conveniently «lost» my lab tests multiple times (which were also painful to redo).
after my third IV bag was empty, she forgot about me for 4 hours and let it sit there empty. it created a vacuum and sucked my blood backwards to the valve thing. yum.
i was out of school for 6 weeks.

If you would like to know what preceded my experience at BCH, I refer you to my review of Frasca, which we were dining at for our first wedding anniversary.
And, well, we just figured, we’ve just had a really expensive meal, why go home and watch a movie and open a bottle of wine when we could head down the street for some painkillers and the rantings of a high bipolar 20-​something? BCH it is!
In all seriousness, mid-​fancy meal I realized, «Well, sh*t, I’m getting a UTI aren’t I?» that by the end of the meal was «we have to go NOW!»
We got to the hospital and an amazing male nurse whose name I never learned, unfortunately, checked me in and very kindly didn’t treat me like an idiot. «Do you know what such-​and-​such means?» he’d ask me, to which I’d reply yes, and he’d say «ok then I don’t need to tell you that.», which saved me time and got me in faster, which I really appreciated. I gave some samples, which the nurse said looked really conclusive to him, but which the lab, and therefore doctor, later said didn’t look conclusive at all. I gave another sample and it came back the same way. This was one of the few times I got annoyed, because they said they would «rush» the second sample, and it took, I am not exaggerating, 2 hours, for them to look at a urine sample. Yes, it’s an ER on a Friday, but guess what? I was one of 3 patients total. Seeing as how the first sample’s analysis took less than an hour, tripling the time for a «rush» sample seems a little backwards.
So, then the doctor came back and said «well, it’s just not conclusive, so I want to do an ultrasound», which actually meant two ultrasounds in various levels of personal violation. The ultrasound didn’t show anything of course so then we ended up leaving with the medication I knew we would be leaving with, except we were there for 4.5 hours instead of the 1 that would really have been necessary.
I do appreciate that they were trying to be as thorough as possible, though that thoroughness is making me very afraid to open any bills. And although I didn’t enjoy being at the hospital on my anniversary until 3:30 AM, we did finally get to witness a ranting person high as a kite, which we were really banking on by that time of evening. So at least we got some entertainment with our evening.

Recently accompanied someone to be seen at the BCH ER. Excellent care from start to finish. Another hospital the patient had recently been in had prescribed a medication that caused an extreme allergic reaction and the team here got it figured out and corrected within hours. Very professional… and helpful. They take all insurance including CICP which is helpful as most restaurant workers do not have insurance, and surprisingly enough, many qualify for CICP, which is a program for «indigents» supposedly. How cool is that… to work very hard in a restaurant and fill out a form totally honestly… and completely qualify for an indigent health program? Remember that, next time you’re in a restaurant, people. Most servers, cooks, etc. are not getting rich by cooking and serving you your food.
Great ER at BCH!

Everyone knows that call, or at least will know that call someday: the 3 a.m. oh shit I need to go to the E.R. call.
Well, this was a few days ago for me when my girlfriend had some serious pain issues and had to go in.
By the time I got there she was already dressed in the oh so fabulous lifeless shmock that people seem to call a gown, in bed, with an I.V. giving the standard saline drip, with a little extra love: morphine. The nurses were a bit brisk — not the chatty type you get at other facilities — but this is the E.R. afterall. Anyway, by the time I got there 10 minitues later, she was on round two of morphine.
In the space of a few hours they had taken bloodwork, two urine samples, and finding nothing conclusive, then did an abdominal ultrasound, as well as a pelvic ultrasound. Now, for all you uninitiated, this means a cold probe up her mark of womanhood. Uh, yeah…
Anyway, they found a cyst but on the the wrong side of her body, so they then had to do a full CAT scan, which then meant an enema. Seriously, my poor girl had to go through hell in a few hours, the entire time in a 8−9÷10 pain level.
The morphine was not doing the job, so they then gave her some hydromorphone (i.e. synthetic morphine, viz. the really good shit), and then moved on to the Torodal (Ibuprofen x10), which finally worked.
After 5 hours, finally the CAT scan came back and showed she had a kidney stone: way too young for this shit.
Overall: as an emergency room, the BCH did its job. It treated the pain and then rapidly went through diagnostics to try and figure out what was going on. They mis-​stepped in thinking it was due to the cyst, but that was mainly because there was no blood in her urine.
I still can’t quite make myself give them a 5 out of 5 simply because of how f-​ing expensive it will turn out to be. The copay itself was $ 150, which does not include any of the tests or the drugs. Of course this isn’t necessarily the hospital’s fault as much as the wreck that is the American Medical Systems fault. (Don’t get me started)