MercyOne West Des Moines Emergency Care 1755 59th Place, West Des Moines, IA 50266

"Was there for 4 hours when my sister "sprained" her ankle. They took an hour and a half to "re look" at the x-ray to say it wasn't fractured or broken. Turns out it was broken when we went somewhere else."

"I came here on a busy night, they prioritized me as much as they could. I was in the ER for almost 20-Hours and dealt with various shifts and about 27-people in various professions. They are kind, they are compassionate, they are patient. This was my first ER visit and I am so glad I chose MercyOne."

"Was seen promptly after getting there, no more than 10 minutes. All the staff were polite and professional. Never know what you're going to get with ERs, but everyone on this shift was awesome."

"Avoid if you don’t want to become bankrupt… This review is not a one star because of the care I received at the ER but because of the incompetence and unwillingness of the entire MercyOne Hospital billing team (now Trinity Health). As a European, I knew that all medical procedures have astronomical costs in the US but I was not prepared for this. Woke up during the night with an extremely intense headache that caused continuous vomiting and nothing I did/took at home would work against it so I kept on being sick (therefore losing a lot of fluids). Although I know that the ER is always the last resort, unfortunately, at 4am there is nothing else open. No one else was there so processing was quite quick with 2 nurses doing a ROUTINE CHECK (blood pressure, and temperature but NO labs or blood tests, NO MRI or X-rays). Then the doctor spent around 5 minutes with me where he diagnosed a bad migraine and instructed the nurses to give me fluids, painkillers and an anti-nausea medication all in one IV. Again, nothing special, they put in ONE IV with fluids and these 2 meds. The IV took 45mins to run so with all the checks the entire care took around one hour (maybe 1.5hrs if I’m generous). Before I was admitted, the receptionist took all my insurance details and gave an out of pocket cost estimate of $200-300 so when the bill arrived for around $1000 that I only had to pay $185 of, I was “pleasantly” surprised. A month later I get another bill for around $2000, of which $990 was out of pocket (yep I didn’t know the first bill was only the doctor’s - $1000 for a 5min check with me.. Jesus!) - needless to say I thought I was headed to the ER again for a heart attack this time. And so began my months long quest for understanding WT actual F was $3000 in this 1hour care I received, that I had to pay $1000 for. I really tried everything: I called the hospital’s billing/finance team, managed to get the specific billing codes to cross-check, spoke with my insurance, cross referenced MercyOne’s online cost estimator, read countless No Surprises Act articles and filed multiple disputes but the final result would never change and NOBODY was able to tell me why this was so much and why the initial out of pocket was so vastly different from what I had to pay. I’m also convinced that the billing codes were incorrect but no one would actually do anything about this. I was told the same conclusions every single time: “sorry this is what we received from the department so we can’t change it now”. The ONLY person kind and competent enough in this entire mess of an organization to try and want to help was MercyOne’s patient ambassador and receptionist - Marie. My last resort was to visit the hospital in person where I wanted to talk to someone in billing but this was not possible so she sat down with me, looked through all my documents and called every single department she could think of to explain as this also didn’t make any sense to her. Unfortunately no luck but thank you so much Marie for trying to help when no one else would. So yes, I felt physical pain when I paid $1000 for my 1.5hr long ER visit with the most basic care and promised myself that in the future I don’t care how bad or painful my state is, I will wait for an urgent care clinic to open in the morning. “Thank you” MercyOne for introducing me to US medical prices and mess of administrative procedures where the goal is to confuse the patient with all this billing and insurance BS so that even if they’re truly systematically trying to understand, they still end up swallowed in the black hole of billing departments. Since this was my first (and hopefully last) ER visit I don’t know if the same mess exists at other places but because even after 10 months, I still feel outraged at how unhelpful this institution was, I will actively discourage people from going to any MercyOne facility. P.S.: If you dare to comment to say that you’re sorry I had a bad experience and that I should call your customer service reps - you should know I’ve called them all and they’re totally useless."

"I read the reviews before taking family to Mercy West ER and should’ve listened to others reviews. The staff did not show concern for our visit when one of my family members had stomach pain. Never once did the staff check on us in between the wait of lab results etc. We checked in around 6:30pm and 6 hours later… we are still in the ER. I understand hospitals are understaffed but it should not take 6 hours."