A Miserable Experience at a Banner Hospital in Mesa AZ

Executive Summary

  • The experiences at many, if not most, hospitals are horrible.
  • This article covers one of these types of incidents.

Introduction

This article describes an experience supporting a patient admitted to the Mesa Banner Heart Hospital on Jan 1st, 2022.

On Jan 1st, 2023, a man complained of breathing problems in a Target in Mesa, AZ. The EMTs appeared, and by the time they arrived, the man had already begun to feel better. The EMT stated that due to their machine telling them there were issues with the man’s heart, they would take him to the Mesa Banner ER — in the same Banner complex as the Banner Heart Hospital. The EMT said that they had the necessary equipment at that location.

Day 1

There was much waiting on the first day, but not much was done. There were several blood draws, and this man’s blood pressure was very high. He was placed on four drugs which are the following.

Two have a significant expense, while two are very low in price. 

A question that I will be addressing for this person is which of these drugs is necessary to take long term. For that, we will be getting the views of a second cardiologist. But this person has been exercising and cutting back on food.

The Four Drugs

However, there was little explanation as to which would be taken short term versus long term.

The one heart abnormality they brought up was that he had an issue with PVC. However, when I asked this man by phone what this was, he could not tell me. This calls into question how much is being explained to this man. Overall, the communication of information was vague.

I wanted him to get potassium and magnesium because I thought it could have been related to his PVC issue. They said they did not have a banana because the galley never got one until I taught them when he was discharged.

The hospital did not pick up on the fact that this man had diarrhea from a Mexican restaurant he had eaten at night before. It seemed unlikely that this issue with breaking the next day and the heart performance were entirely unrelated.

Toward the end of Day 1, Banner told him that they wanted to keep him over the night for observation. I am not sure this was warranted, as at that point, the only problematic issue they had found was that of PVCs, which are not a significant issue and are usually considered to work themselves out. This man agreed to stay at the hospital for the night.

Day 2

The next day, again, very little happened. I called around noon, and Banner did very little with the morning. The pattern from day one continued where occasional blood draws would occur, but there did not appear to be any motivation to do much or to explain things to the patient.

The hospital had him stay over an extra night for what made no sense to me. They said they wanted him to get “used to the medication.” This seemed like something done to bill Medicare rather than essential. Banner does little with the time the patient is there, with all of the MDs seemingly busy with other things and with very little time for patients, but then they like to keep patients over multiple nights, even though little gets done during the day. I recommended to this patient that he not stay over a second night and that he could come back for other tests. I also told him this was a massive hospital known as a poorly run hospital with poor outcomes and was not close to the better facilities in Phoenix where he could get evaluated. This was the hospital close to where he had problems breathing in Target. I also told him the hospital’s performance so far had been poor. However, he sidetracked the conversation about who was necessary for his health — which was not something I was disputing. So he went against my recommendation and agreed to stay over a second night. He ended up regretting that decision.