Highland Park Hospital Emergency Department

"Went to HPH ER with chest pain on 3/1/24 around 3 ish pm. Was told the hospital was full, the ER had no open suites, the waiting room had approx 50 people and that 3 ambulances waiting. An unidentified woman without a uniform said the wait time was 4-6 hours and that other hospitals in the area had longer wait times. They were not doing triage. I left without being seen as sitting there for hours would have caused me greater stress and pain. NO medical care was given. What is being done to address this very dangerous place?"

"It’s been hours sitting in the waiting room with what I believe is appendicitis...I’m in pain. I went to urgent care 5 hrs ago, who sent me here with a referral to get an abdominal scan done. It’s been 4 hrs in the waiting room with no scan? No diagnosis and I’m in pain. I’ve never been to this ER but am in shock. They are not that busy but there is little to no activity by the staff."

"I would give 0 stars, but 1 is the minimum. We've spent the last 3 hours (and counting) in the sitting area waiting for a family member to get stitches after a bad fall. He's been bandaged, but he's bleeding, busted up, and it's 3 in the morning. There aren't many people in the waiting room with us, but one lady has been here for 5 hours. Staff is incredibly inattentive, and it's quite frankly unbelievable that we've had to wait this long for something relatively simple. Additionally, the bill the hospital will send us will likely be ridiculously expensive, which is laughable, given the level of treatment we're receiving. Do not come to this ER, try another hospital. The care and attentivenes of this ER is simply egregious. Update: doctor was great, everything else and all other staff members were not. Wait time was unacceptable for a hospital of this (alleged) quality."

"On Saturday, October 28, 2023, I was referred by a physician at Immediate Care to HP Hospital ER post a fall on my head. My registration went smoothly and fast. Within 10-15 minutes I was called by the Triage Nurse and taken on a wheel chair for a brain CT and Xray on my back. both technicians were very nice and professional. Post the Xray, I was taken by Eric (very nice and pleasant) to the ER and was left there for hours..,.. on a hard wheelchair with pain in my lower back. After 90-120 minutes I asked what's happening, no-one came to say anything. Not a word! There was a very large group of Afro-Americans who were soooo loud and inconsiderate (around 20+ people) who did not sit quietly for a second. I politely asked them (twice) to please be considerate since it's an ER wait room but no acknowledgement, no consideration. At some point, Kim Ferguson from the Registration Desk came to me and moved me close to the security stand. The a.m. Public Health Officer or the Security Man (not sure what's the title) steadily sat without even going to this group of people and trying to calm them down. I would say, once, he got up and stood in front, said and did absolutely NOTHING. What kind of a security man is that? I was still seated when he was replaced by the p.m. person. At some point, after sitting for about 3-4 hours, I got in to my NS Connect to check the results of both my scans. They were read by the Radiologist before or around noon. Again, no-one came up to me to say a word. I saw that there was no fracture, nor hematoma and left the ER - advised Kim from the Registration Desk. This is shocking service, whatever the case might be, to leave a patient sitting on a hard wheelchair in a very noisy waiting room for hours, having sharp back ache! Having said that, this is what appears on my NS Connect with NO time on it. "ED Disposition - Left Before Seeing MD" The courtesy of receiving a phone call or a follow up call by a nurse, doctor or social services / case manager never came? This must be addressed with the ER staff and taken care of for future visits of patients. Thank you! PS I suggest looking at the low percentage of reviews (14) @ 1.9 This probably confirms my above review."

"Everyone that we had to interact with was very nice but there was no sense of urgency from anyone. I agree with one of the previous reviews that some of the nurses seemed annoyed when they had to come up and call a new patient up but luckily it wasn't any of the nurses we had to deal with. We spent over 10 hours at the hospital overall and about 8 of those were spent in the waiting room as we saw the amount of people waiting alongside us grow. It seemed as everyone went to triage very fast and some would leave to get their blood drawn but came right back. Once we were in the back, we were taken to our own room. I was disappointed to see the same lack of urgency and I began to understand why there was such a long wait time. One of the security guards, although very friendly, asked us to take the clothes from the patient that was in their hospital administered green plastic bag to our car because we couldn't have it in the room. Excuse me, what? We can't have clothes in the room in a bag you guys gave us? What if we had no car? Would they make us wait outside with the clothes? After we saw the doctor, 2 different nurses and a therapist we sat waiting to get a diagnosis and we were moved from our room to a room across the hall. I'm assuming they did that to bring in another patient but we were put in what felt like the coldest room in the hospital! It was completely empty and had a garage door wall on one side. They must've been aware of how cold the room was because they gave us 3 warm blankets when they put us in there. It was a very weird and unwelcoming transaction but we were too exhausted to even say anything or ask questions and I sympathized with the new patient that would take our place in the more comfortable room. To top off that weird interaction, we walked passed 3 new security guards that seemed to be discussing patients out loud which was a bit disturbing. Overall, we feel disappointed with our ER visit and wouldn't recommend to anyone for any reason. When we walked through the doors initially, if they told me it was going to be over 10 hours (8 of those hours sitting in the waiting room before being seen) I would've turned around and left. To spend that amount of time at a hospital without being seen for what you went there for in the first place is pretty ridiculous."