Nyu Medical Center

Never really know how to rate hospitals because thankfully I do not attend them a lot… or at least try not too.
Had to come here recently due to two close friends of mine recently having a baby and the mother giving birth here. I am guessing they treated her well and the baby was delivered safe and sound. Other than that can’t really comment much on NYU Medical but being that it is owned or ran by those of NYU higher ups it should be a very advanced and skilled medical center.

This review is for their maternity experience. I gave birth via C-​section at NYU Tisch Hospital. I didn’t go the usual route of picking the obgyn by the hospital they are affiliated with — I picked my obgyn and went with the hospital they worked with. My C-​section experience was quite good, everything went smoothly and in a timely manner. I was scheduled for 8am, I delivered by 9am. I was then taken to the recovery room, and after that their semi-​private room.
A private room wasn’t available, but we were able to use the semi-​private as private. Several nurses and people came in and out asking if I needed anything. Overall initially my experience started off well. However, the babies were under a lot of stress. They constantly came in to check on my newborn boys, withdrawing blood, etc., the babies had to interrupt their sleep constantly. The nurses were friendly, but some more trained. Eg. one nurse kept my babies in pain while she withdraw a tiny bottle of blood for testing, she kept withdrawing from a wailing baby for 15 – 20 mins. I thought this was the norm. But on our last day, an efficient nurse came in and was done in 1 minute before the babies had time to cry.
My diet restrictions kept changing and I had to constantly rectify the errors. There was poor follow-​through. I kept asking for stool medicine, extra gown, etc., and sometimes things just were not sent on time and I had to ask different people. I had read online to ask for stool softeners from the very beginning which I did, they kept forgetting to get back to me. I was finally able to get one, a very light dose. The last day in the hospital I was in IMMENSE pain due to issues with stool (C-​section impact). I kept pleading and begging for a stronger stool softener, the night nurse would not give me ANY because she said we don’t give it overnight. She said to ask the morning nurse. I was in pain the whole night, two babies crying for me while I tripped to the bathroom in pain that put uncontrollable pressure on my stitches. The morning nurse refused to give me any because I was getting discharged that day.
The last day left a VERY bad taste in my mouth. The morning nurse was HORRIBLE. She talked down to us, made is very clear starting 9am that since I was to be discharged at 12, I needed to start wrapping things up. I was feeding my babies and she kept coming in to ensure we were done despite having 3 hours to check out. She was very condescending. When I asked for some hospital stuff which a lot of hospitals give to manage newborns at home for the first few days after discharge, she gave me the bare minimum. For formula, I asked for nipples and she said the whole hospital is out of stock and refused to give us any. I finally got another nurse and asked her to at least give us 2 nipples till we purchased more, since we needed to feed the babies formula at least that day. The nurse was able to give us nipples, so go figure.
The hospital also has a strong emphasis on providing formula, it feels like a cult. The pediatrician recommended a significant formula plan that didn’t work well with my breastfeeding goals. Now one baby is exclusive breastfeeding, the other on breastfeeding plus formula plan, but both are growing at a healthy pace. Had I followed the pediatrician’s recommendation, my milk production would have decreased. Overall I found the hospital VERY pro-​formula to the point of pushing it too aggressively. Nurses had to have a diaper log, and they had to see a minimum number of dirty diapers. If not, formula was the solution. Looking at their attitude, I stopped sending my babies to the nursery despite sleepless nights. I didn’t trust that they would be well taken care of. Other hospitals (Cornell) provide a lot more support for breastfeeding. NYU seems to support the formula industry, they are ALL very insistent on supplementing and their lactation consultants aren’t that helpful.
I don’t have any other hospital to compare this with, but I will not deliver at NYU again and hope better hospitals are out there. BTW the clothing that they gave didn’t fit at all, and after a certain duration started giving us washed stuff instead of new for the babies when I asked for extras. My friends who delivered at other hospitals had better fitting clothing.

Incredibly awful emergency room. Honestly, 2 ppl in the waiting room. The nurse sits on her computer doing I don’t know what. While I’m bleeding all over myself and floor. Takes them two hours to bring me in and I wait another 1 hour. It’s more of a playground than workplace.

Terrible terrible emergency service. When you go to a hospital to get better and return feeling worse you know something is wrong.
I took my wife there late at night because she was having strong flu-​like symptoms, feeling very bad. To start with, the waiting room was small, and dirty. There was a huge fly flying around. Hugely inappropriate for a hospital.
Then there was the wait. We’ve waited over two hours, and only two people in the waiting room had been called. There were still 5 or 6 people ahead of us. They couldn’t give any kind of estimate of when my wife would be helped. That’s plain right incompetence. They offer that service every single day. They should know better how long the wait is. They couldn’t even give ballpark figures (30 min? 3 hours? 6hours?). But I believe they just didn’t care. In any case, according to my own estimate (less than 1 person /​hour) it would be over 5 hours wait. There was a women there that had been waiting for over 3 hours and was crying in dispair.
On top of that, the staff was rude, with some exceptions. The nurse that does the triage wouldn’t answer my questions. The women that appeared twice to call patients, (let’s call her AH) wouldn’t call the names loud and clear enough. The second patient wasn’t sure it was her name that was called, but AH just disappeared behind the door after calling the name (didn’t even wait!). After a couple of minutes, AH shows up again, and rants about how the patient was making her wait with a lot other patients in line: «How many times do I have to call you???» Wow! That’s the kind of service you get when you are sick and tired after waiting several hours for not understanding the mumble of a stupid employee.
In the end we ended up asking the nurse one more time how much longer we would have to wait, to no avail. After all we saw, we decided there was no point staying there for 2 or 3 more hours. My wife would feel better at home and in that place.
If you think the NYU Emergency room awfulness stops there, it doesn’t! Even though we received absolutely no service there after waiting over 2 hours, today I just received a notification that they are charging us for 274.08 for «ER/​CLINIC/​MISC». What the hell!!! I’m completely pissed off by this place. They have complete disregard about you, and don’t mind stepping on you to get their money. Very, very sad and disappointing.

It is totally my own fault, I certainly should have known better after my first experience in the ER but in my defense, the hospital was literally across the street from where I lived.
ER visit: Fell, thought I may have broken my elbow as the pain and swelling increased by the hour. Went to the ER. Did not have too long to wait as it was 4AM and the x-​ray technician told me if he had a choice of ER’s to go to, NYU would not be the one he’d choose. I found this strange as this information was freely offered and he worked there. He took the x-​ray, back I go to ER, waited about an hour, a resident came over and said nothing was broken or fractured, keep it iced. It turned out that the elbow was indeed broken and I had pieces of bone splinters around the break. I found this out when a week later I had a hip replacement at another hospital and I was having great difficulty and in tremendous pain weight bearing on the broken arm which I had to do each time I got in or out of bed with my new prosthesis. It was six weeks later when I went to my internist as a follow up regarding my hip replacement and he asked me what was wrong with my arm? I explained that I had gone to NYU of which he is affiliated a week before the hip replacement and this was the first chance I had to see him. My left arm was shorter by a couple of inches to my right and the bone had set in an angle. He sent me right over to NYU for another x-​ray. I decided to go to a hand specialist who was not affiliated with NYU, who took one look and said your arm has been broken and set itself. I told him I had gone to NYU and they told me everything was fine. It obviously was not, and I required in-​hospital stay at another hospital (I refused to stay at NYU) to repair the damage and the error by the radiologist.
NYU Hospital stay: This time I did not need to go to the ER I knew I was having surgery of my right hip. I was told to be there by noon, I was. I was told to wait in a room, I did. Five hours later I was still in the room by myself with only one brief look in by a nurse who didn’t speak to me, just looked at me and then closed the door behind her. The head of orthopedics and his anesthesiologist showed up at 5:45 with blood on the white sneakers and their scrubs. They apologized they had kept me waiting almost 6 hours (remember I had not eaten or drank since the day before) and they looked exhausted. I suggested they take a walk, grab a cup of coffee as they would have another 4 hours of work ahead of them. This I thought was extremely gracious of me. They declined and I then offered to call it a day and I’d reschedule as I was not thrilled with the idea of the chief working on me after he had been working on someone else for most of the day. He insisted it would be fine. My gut told me it would not be but I did not want to make a fuss with the guy whose surgical hands would have a direct influence on the outcome. I was taken right into the OR and the anesthesiologist told me to bend over as he would be placing an epidural into my spine. At no point did he or anyone ask me, is it numb (your right side?) I was simply put to sleep. I woke up screaming in pure agony. I called out to the Mother of God, Jesus Christ, and all the saints, I even remember I screamed for my mother who had been dead some years prior to this surgery. The pain was indescribable. I can only relate it to watching a war movie, seeing someone’s leg blown off and their laying there. The anesthesiologist in his haste has numbed my left side instead of my right hence the agonizing pain. He was called to recovery and told me somehow the epidural had moved during the surgery and it was now no use, he would have to try and override the pain with a mass of intravenous morphine, they called it a bomb. I screamed and the tears flowed down the sides of my face throughout the hours it took for the morphine to finally kick in. I have a memory of someone saying the time was 5AM something and I thought all someone had to do before they rushed me to unconsciousness was to ask me, can you feel anything down your right side by simply pricking me with a pin a few times. Instead I awoke to this nightmare. which still makes me sick to my stomach when I think about it, there where no beds available on the orthopedics floor at no time during my stay so I spent it in the transplant floor where no one had experience in handling an orthopedic patient, each time they moved me it felt as if they where going to pull the hip out of the socket. Six years later my right hip remains in pain when I walk more than two blocks. The things I saw and heard re my room mate dying waiting for a liver proved to me there was no humanity in that hospital, they were downright abrupt with her. If I ever go back to NYU I am taking a recorder with me — I would suggest other patients do the same — you are now warned NYU!!!