Staten Island University Hospital

If for some crazy reason you decide to live on Staten Island make sure that you live very close to the Verrazano Bridge so that in the eventuality that you get sick you will have easy access to Brooklyn and a Medical Center there. Or just don’t get sick on SI. Sad, but true.

My 97 year-​old father suddenly couldn’t walk, and was taken by ambulance to the Staten Island University Hospital Emergency Room. When I joined here there, on his bed in the hallway, I was told that he had fractured his pelvis. They also gave him a urinary catheter. He complained of it being painful. I was told later that they had used the wrong sized one, a heart catheter instead. No wonder he was in pain! His urine was bloody, and they told me that he had tugged at the catheter, causing the blood. Only later did I find out this wasn’t the reason. We were given the option of having him stay on a bed in the hallway until hopefully a bed opened up in their North facility, or an ambulance taking him to their Seguine Ave South facility right away (actually a couple hour wait for the transporting ambulance. Apparently transporting ambulances have wide leeway in terms of arrival time).
The first night, the nightshift doctor called to give me a status update. No, my father did NOT have a fractured pelvis! He had the correct urinary catheter inserted, and the reason his urine was the color of cherry Kool-​Ade was due to the damage done by the wrongly-​sized use of the heart catheter in the ER. They were going to continue to flush it out to remove blood clots. The doctors in the South facility, as opposed to te ER doctors (whoosh! there goes one!) were informative. Once there at the South facility, the nursing and PCA care was good and attentive. If the review was based upon them and the doctors alone, there would be more stars However, dietary was starving him in the worst example of childhood «you eat what we give you or you get nothing» ever.
My dad was on a sodium-​restricted heart healthy diet. There seemed to be an institutional flavor restriction, too. My father ate none of the food. After telling them that he gets 2 Ensure a day at home, they had a doctor write an order for this in the hospital. This meant that one day the 6’3″ in his prime man had a total of 700 calories for the entire day, completely delivered by the Ensure. And dietary was ok with that. I spoke with them, to try and communicate what he actually eats. When they found out that he has no lower teeth, his food became the consistency of purée (which he never ate at home), only without flavor. Are spices prohibited? I told the dietary rep that he had a bottle of Ensure, 8oz glass of orange juice, a banana, and a small chewy Chips Ahoy cookie for breakfast. Apparently all they could manage from this menu was the Ensure. No banana, no oj. Really? I said he liked chicken legs and/​or wings. She replied that they serve nothing with bones. Isn’t that carrying fear of liability too far? I asked about fries. She replied that he hospital had fries, but not for the patients. Then who was worthy of receiving fries? Visitors, of course! Besides, she said, he was on a heart-​healthy diet. I asked if it was possible to cook them in the oven, with a spritz of olive oil. There was agreement. When I went to visit him, he wasn’t eating the mushy-​breaded chicken patty. The fries had never seen oil of any kind. Nor had they been visited by the seasoning gods. I had asked her if they had Nu Salt. No, they had Mrs. Dash. I don’t know who they were saving Mrs. Dash for, but it wasn’t my father. During his stay in the hospital, he had the 2 Ensures the hospital provided, ice cream I bought downstairs from the machine, and part of a chicken nugget, sweet potato fries, sour cream dinner I had brought from home. It was within the low-​sodium range, but actually edible. By then, his stomach had shrunk, and he couldn’t finish it. The nurse said she could put it in the staff refrigerator. No one would get it because the room was locked. Yet, the next day it was gone, including the Tupperware. Not only did they steal the half-​eaten food from the container in the locked room, but they stole the container as well!
During his stay, my dad experienced lucidity problems far in excess of the occasional short term memory lapse at home. Someone familiar with elder problems said this likely had been caused by his near-​starvation with resulting blood sugar drops. The nurses compensated for his tendency to want to get up and walk by improvising a daybed, and setting it up in front of the nurses’ station. Have to give them props for ingenuity, but wouldn’t it have been easier to just feed the man food he would eat, instead? Before I brought the nuggets, etc. from home, the dietary rep stressed several times «we can’t stop people from bringing food from home». So apparently our situation wasn’t new. I’m just unhappy that I didn’t realize sooner the extent of their inflexibility, indifference and lack of culinary skills in serving food a patient might want to eat. Now that my dad is home and well-​nourished, he is once again cognisant of his surroundings and place therein. Try another hospital.

The actual care in testing etc., that you get here is decent. The problem is the staff in the emergency room and observation room (nurses, attendants etc. physician assistants etc. emergency room doctor). You will see 3 doctors, 3 Physician Assistants and get 6 different opinions, pressing a button to get a nurse to come to your room is an exercise in futility. You have to unhook yourself from any monitoring equipment to use the bathroom, or risk making all over yourself waiting for no one to come. I asked 3 different, nurses, attendants or whatever they were for a cup of ice water, each said they would, no one ever brought any. There’s obviously no real leadership in this facility. Using the we’re too busy on this Island, since there’s no public hospital on SI only goes so far… Pluses, it’s relatively clean, staff is polite and the rooms have decent TV’s and cable.

This review is for their emergency room building. I have been here enough in the last couple of months to be able to write this review.
I have to say they have a very helpful staff (nurses & aides) but, they are overwhelmed with people double stacked in the hallways for over 6 hours in the emergency room. I don’t know if it is cutbacks in the city with the hospitals, fire departments and police departments or just a lack of space.
To find a doctor to answer your questions about a loved ones status is nearly impossible. You get more answers from a nurse or an aide. A family member of mine has had tests done previously and the staff did not realize it. (no lie, they had to look it up in the history of the patient to see the test had been done the day before).
This would normally be a 2 star review, but I give it an extra star just for their supporting staff. Hopefully I didn’t vent too much.

This is the worst hospital ever. You go in with one problem and come out with 10 others including what you originally went in for. Try to not have a heart attack while on Staten Island, because if you go here while having one, you are not rushed in to receive medical help. Instead, you are stopped so that you can «register» while having shortness of breath and not being able to speak. How wonderful. I would not recommend ever going here, no matter what your situation. Go straight to NYC. Don’t waste your time with the useless management or understaffed Doctors who throw all of the cases onto the interns that graduated a month before your visit and have no experience.

This is the worst hospital I have ever been to in my entire life, they treat you like crap they tookn16 hours (not exaggerating even a little) to take out a pick iv which took another hospital 10 minutes to do all they care about is holding you as long as possible to get money from the insurance.