Citizens Memorial Hospital

"Emergency room is a war zone. Expect to be waiting forever to be seen. People have been known to wait as much as 7 hours to see a doctor. If you are on deaths door you might get bumped up in line but flip a coin your chances are better. Your chances truly are greater at the local veterinary clinic, at least being treated like a dog is expected."

"CMH Billing is the absolute worst. It is central through Bolivar and encompasses billing for different CMH locations. My husband received bills for physical therapy and repeatedly called about it and was told he didn’t owe anything. They sent a certified letter. They eventually called him back and told him they found the record of what he owed and he paid over the phone. Now another family member has been turned over to a collection agency for what appears to have been a bill for a small amount from November. We don’t have the CMH bill, they say they no longer know how much is owed since it has been turned over to a collection agency. We have no way of knowing if this is legitimate, a billing error, or a scam from a fake. Collection agency. I love our local nurse practitioner but everything else about them is chaos."

"It was my best experience in any of the Missouri hospitals. So hard to trust doctors whom you don't know and when you are in agony. But not this time. Everybody were very caring and attentive to me. All doctors were professional and helpful. I had an abdominal surgery and was able to walk and eat after the 4th day. I am happy I've got to this place."

"Not happy with the ER at all. Have my son here right now and my husband isn’t allowed in. Never heard of such foolishness and I am not happy about it. You have a set of parents and they both have a right to be in there together to support each other when we don’t know what is going on. Been here recently with another on of my kids and we were both allowed in."

"I don’t even know where to begin with explaining my experience at Citizens Memorial yesterday other than to start with I hope no one ever has to experience what I did. It started with coming to the emergency room around 5:30am. I was in intense pain from a kidney stone. After checking me in they took me back to a room that had dirty sheets on the bed. I was told to sit in the hall until the room could be cleaned. Then I was taken to the room and all my vitals were taken. The nurse could tell I was in horrible pain so she left to go get some. After 10 minutes of her never coming back to the room, I started vomiting. Because I was hooked to several cables I couldn’t leave the room to find someone so I grabbed a trash can that was full of disposed gloves and other contaminated waste. After the vomiting ended, I took the cables off myself and was able to find a cleaning lady and begged her to find someone for me. While she couldn’t understand exactly what I needed she made contact with a group of people at the nurses station in the emergency room area. That lady popped her head out and said they were in the middle of a shift change and couldn’t do anything for me for a while. I was shocked to say the least since I had already been put in a room and was told by the nurse that she was going to get pain medicine. After reaching a point that I was about to pass out from the pain, I walked up to the nurses station where everyone was involved in some sort of conversation rather than tending to the patients and said I was just going to try to make it to Springfield. Instead of getting someone to take care of me, this same woman just said “Then let us take out the IV port”. Not one offer to get someone to help me. Finally another nurse walked up and said to just go back to the room and she would be right there with pain medicine. She gave me morphine and something else. It didn’t really work but I guess it made it bearable since I was able to wait for a doctor to come in. This was the first time I was able to explain what was going on. A cat scan was done and it was determined I had a kidney stone so he decided to admit me and scheduled me to have surgery with Mark Walterskirchen the next day. I was moved to a room where I was taken very good care of through the rest of the day by Tyler and Cindy. However, this morning I started having symptoms of another condition I have called Urticaria of entire body. This causes places on my body to swell with hives as well as on my face, my lips and inside my mouth and throat. I logged into my patient portal at Cass regional to show Cindy my conditions and medications. She said nothing could be done until the doctor got there. I ask for some nose spray because it has antihistamines in it and sometimes helps. Again nothing do I decided to just get outside and get some air. I was told I couldn’t go outside and by this point Dr Walterskirchen was in the room. He wanted me to make a decision about going ahead with my surgery this morning or not. I told him until I could get some air I couldn’t even think about it. He said that isn’t how surgery works. I finally just told them to release me and I had a friend who was there in about 5 minutes to get me. By the time he got me back to my place I was swelling up and at a total loss for breath. He ran in my house and got my Epi pen and thankfully I survived."