Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center

Reviews 4

CI

Ciara Johnson

On Saturday morning at 12:15am, we rushed our 2.5 year old daughter to your facility in San Luis Obispo. She woke up with a scary cough, covered in hives and a fever. This is our first type of visit to your facility. We delivered both our children at French hospital in SLO, however when this emergency arose, we felt we were making the smart choice by choosing Sierra. We were wrong. When we arrived the office was quiet. We were quickly taken back by a nurse to get our daughters vitals taken. The nurse was attentive and sweet, and our daughter took to her right away. Unfortunately after her vitals were taken and we were getting ready to go back to a room, two ambulances came in so we were escorted back to the waiting room. We realize there is nothing we can do about this and understood why we needed to wait. We waited for 2.5 hours in the waiting room with our 2.5 year old and 8 month old baby. Once we were finally placed in a room, our daughter had a mini panic attack - mind you it is in the middle of the night, she is tired, not feeling well, and scared. We were able to soothe her and get her distracted with a video on my phone. Once the doctor came in, however, she panicked again. Instead of a calming presence, he started questioning why she was crying, and if he should leave the room. I explained to my daughter that he was going to listen to her breathe, at which point he told me he couldnt because she was crying. He looked in her ears, told me he thought it was croup (she didnt cough in front of him) and left the room. A nurse came back with a prescription for a steroid. $300, 3 hours of waiting, and 30 seconds with a doctor with horrible bedside manner. He honestly treated me like we were dumb for bringing her in. We came for peace of mind, and left with no answers. Fortunately we were able to get her into her pediatrician the next day who took the time to look at her throat, listen to her breathing, examine her hives and provide a safe and comforting environment for our sensitive little girl. I pray that an emergency situation like this does not come up again, but if it does, we will ALWAYS choose French Hospital. As a parent, this is concerning for parents in our county. Fortunately our daughter is going to be OK. However if the situation were different with another child, and the doctor did not examine the child properly because they were crying, the results could be deadly. We sincerely hope you hear our voice and work with your staff on their bedside manner. We expected more from a hospital in San Luis Obispo.

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Shawni Valdovinos

This place SUCKS!!!!! I will never go here again. I had went in a couple times for false labor. I would have chosen French but my midwife advised to go here for the NICU. All the nurses were very rude in the L&D. They were talking down to me like I was the one being rude. Nothing was wrong with my baby and everything was fine. If I was having false contractions, I didnt even want to go to Sierra Vista because they made me soooo uncomfortable. When the time came, I had my baby at French Hospital. They have to best L&D. I will be having my second baby there. I brought my son to Sierra Vista the day after I brought him home to be checked for Jaundice. I am a new mother and dont know what to look for in a baby. I got to the ER around 4 in the afternoon. It was disgusting. I got a really bad vibe. There was a whole bunch of people with out masks that were sick and coughing. This sick little boy was walking around with no shoes on. One kid had nothing on but underwear. My son has Medical and I had mentioned that to the lady at the front desk. She was very nice but obviously stupid because she looked at my baby, I told her that he was only 3 days old, when the lady called me back to do more evaluation, she had put my son as a year old, and spelled his name all wrong, TWICE. After all that got settled, we waited 4 hours in the ER waiting room to get seen. The only thing that was making me happy was reading the bad reviews on this place. When we finally got called in, we didnt even get a room, we sat on a bed in the hallway! when the nurse finally came to us, she asked me what was wrong with my son and I told her that I thought he had jaundice. She took one look at him and was like "Oh no, he doesnt have jaundice." she said it so rude and made me feel stupid. Than she called the Dr. to see my baby, he was very rude. talking to me like hes better than I am. They didnt do anything to my son except for look at him. didnt even check his heart or his breathing or anything. so 3 or 4 weeks later, I get a bill from Sierra Vista for 300$ !!!! FOR NOTHING. This was the worst experience I have ever had at a hospital. This place never seems to surprise me anymore.

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Elizabeth Ferranto

Reading the comments here, and taking into account my own experiences, it is clear that they are struggling with several basic problems. They seem genuinely aware of recent developments in patient care and experience, understanding that comfort and satisfaction is vital to proper health services. But they have some significant problems with communications and responsiveness of staff. Some staff members are excellent and professional, but some, while going through the motions of care, can be senselessly rough, inattentive, and demeaning (rolling their eyes, for example, at simple patient requests). Basic rules, for example preventing staff from congregating in the halls and socializing loudly while patients try to sleep, can be ignored. Many public spaces are clean, but others—for example the staff lounges—look as if they haven’t been vacuumed in many days. They seem aware of newer ideas in creating a culture of hospital service excellence but follow through is spotty. For example, they have dry erase boards on the walls in patients’ rooms, intended in part so patients can track their own treatment, know the names of staff on duty, etc. But staff do not always write on these boards, or if they do, the script isnt large enough for patients to see. In my opinion, though, the most troubling thing here was the way in which the staff can use legalistic sounding phrases to impose their ideas. Sometimes they themselves do not seem to know the meaning of the words they use. For example, I was told that a Medicare patient could not make a “lateral move” from one medical center (Sierra Vista) to another. When I called the local branch of California’s Department of Aging, however, they had never heard of this term. When they referred me to Medicare itself, I learned that they hadn’t heard of this term either. I will also say that Medicare was concerned enough to offer to begin an investigation. When I spoke with the staff about these inquiries, all they continued to say was "Medicare does not allow lateral moves," as if they hadnt heard me, and couldnt take the new information in. Our health care system has problems, but why is this place (f)ailing

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Nicole Hanson

You always see the negative reviews of hospitals, but what about the Beautiful life-saving Stories? Sierra Vista Hospital is a hero for my family on many occasions. 8 years ago I almost died of viral meningitis it was Sierra Vista Hospital who properly diagnosed, treated me, and saved my life after another local hospital in a nearby Town diagnosed me as being drunk. When my daughter broke her collarbone we came here. When my son broke his foot we came here. Sierra Vista Hospital takes treating children very seriously and we are always seen quickly. 2 months ago my son almost died from a twisted intestine. Sierra Vista Hospital revived him and sustained his life. They quickly got him transferred to Valley Childrens Hospital buy helicopter where he had emergency surgery to remove 2 feet of his intestines. Sierra Vista saved his life and they knew what to do even though they didnt know his diagnosis. With distended bowels they were not able to see what was going on but they knew who to contact. They acted quickly which was so vital because his body had gone septic. Without medical intervention we would have lost him. I also have to give credit to a wonderful woman who I call our guardian angel who is outside the emergency room at the time. She was working for San Luis ambulance and saw that I needed help getting him in. I knew she had quickly evaluated him in her mind and saw how critical he was because she quickly took him to a bed where every staff member in the ER dropped what they were doing to work on him. I cannot say how blessed we are that we came to Sierra Vista. Yesterday my youngest daughter got her finger caught in the hinge of my van door. The tip of her finger was falling off. When we got to Sierra Vista and they saw me holding my daughter wrapped in a towel they got me to a bed in less than a minute. They numbed her hand without putting her out and she fell asleep during the stitches. Sierra Vista Hospital did a wonderful job of stitching her up and handling the situation. They went out of their way to make it easy for me and her. The kindness of the doctors and nurses is unmatchable. Thank you Sierra Vista!

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