To the Editor:
We are relatively new to The Villages and have had to make a few trips to The Villages hospital.
The hospital is beautiful and well run, and you can tell that there is a lot of pride that goes into the building, the volunteers and the staff. The reason that I am writing this letter is because, for the first time, I had to go to the emergency room at the hospital.
Even though I had read about negative experiences others had encountered while using The Villages hospital emergency room, I still didn’t think it could be that bad.
Unfortunately, I was sadly mistaken.
The emergency room was understaffed and simply not capable of servicing the needs of the people who came there. While sitting in the waiting room for hours with a blood clot I was amazed at how many others, who were also in need of immediate care, had been waiting. One man came into the waiting room stating that his wife was sitting in the parking lot in the ambulance because they had no beds for her in the emergency room.
The staff member in the emergency room, who was clearly overwhelmed, said that the wait time could be up to 20 hours. Some people left to try to find other hospitals and some stayed and hoped for the best. I just found it hard to believe that this was happening. Our short time living in The Villages we had become so accustomed to everything in The Villages being top notch, that this was just so unexpected. I think the higher level administrators need to take a hard look at what is happening.
They should strive for having the best emergency room services possible (like The Villages tries to provide in all other aspects of living here), or maybe not have an emergency room at all. Their current situation is just giving the entire hospital a bad reputation.
Pete Jackson
San Pedro Villas
