The other day, on our way home, hubby felt a bit dizzy. We blamed it on his hypertension. Excessive climate change can trigger reactions like this and lately, the Philippines has been on the verge of a heat wave. We decided to stop by Mini Stop, a convenience store, to buy juice. We couldn't find a parking spot so we just stop by the side of the road and turn our hazard lights on. To avoid being reprimanded by traffic enforcers, hubby tried to walk really fast towards the store. Bad decision. The dizziness caught up with him and he lost his balance. He tried to regain his composure and placed all his weight on one foot, to no avail since this too buckled. The result: a sprained ankle. When he finally got in the store, he also bought some ice so he can press them close to his ankles as a sort of cold compress. He kept a brave front, but I knew he was hurt.
The next day, he just couldn't get up. His ankle hurt too much. The said ankle had ballooned, too swollen to hit in his shoe. I talked him into going to the hospital. Initially he just wanted to go to the nearest one, but I argued that we should go to one that has complete facilities. I immediately thought of Marikina Valley Medical Center.
We arrived at the emergency room at 7:00 am. There were no other patients. The room was dark, and the nurses, probably already sleepy from their night shift, were slow to approach us, despite seeing hubby miserably limping in. We were greeted by an eager, friendly, smiling nurse. He made me sign the papers, and then he took hubby’s blood pressure. 140/90. hmmm… I seriously doubted the accuracy of this reading since hubby’s pressure is usually 150/100 on a good day. After waiting for some time, the nurse prepared a cold compress.
He filled a rubber glove with ice cold water and asked hubby to press it against his ankle. After some more waiting, we were told that hubby was going to be x-rayed and he was rolled off to the nearby room. After a few minutes, we already have the results. Thankfully, no fracture. We were guided back to the emergency room. More waiting. After some time, I was called to the reception area, the Intellicare (HMO) officer wanted to talk to me. She wanted to know if hubby was under the influence of alcohol during the accident. Of course I said no. (as any person with the right mind would answer) Then more waiting…. all the while, we were being attacked by giant mosquitoes. (I noticed there were no warnings or write ups posted on the walls about dengue. How could they when their hospital was harboring hoards of mosquitoes, even the lone mosquito killer at the far end of the room couldn't do help.)
The doctor finally approached us with the prescription bearing medicine we should buy:Arcoxia 120mg for the pain (P70+) and Myonal which was muscle relaxant (P20+). I asked shouldn’t hubby’s ankle be wrapped in elastic bandage as a sort of support? The doctor thought for a while before finally saying ok. She instructed the male nurse to put a bandage on hubby’s ankle. We were waiting and waiting and waiting, until I finally asked what was taking them so long. The nurse said that they were still waiting for the approval from our HMO…again, for some bandages! Argh! Why didn’t they request for that in the first place? Wasn’t that part of their S.O.P treating sprained ankles? I went to talk to the cashier and told her that we’re willing to pay for the bandages ourselves if this is the only cause of delay, when finally the approval came through and the eager, smiling nurse came bouncing back in the emergency room with the controversial bandages. He bandaged the ankle a bit too tightly, but hubby pretended not to mind since this will surely take some more time to undo and redo again.
We finally left at past 9am. It took more than two hours to be treated at the “emergency” room for a mere sprained ankle! And the hospital wasn’t even bustling with other patients at all!
So after that experience, what can I say about the Marikina Valley Medical Center ? Let me start with the positive. They are accredited by several HMOs, Intellicare included. The personnel, doctor and nurses were courteous and polite. The facilities were new and readily available, like the x-ray and the results were available immediately. They had available medical supplies like rubber gloves and elastic bandages.
The negative: The emergency room is a mosquito sanctuary. It is dark and depressing. I sustained 6 mosquito bites, yes I counted. There were 2 people manning the reception/information area but only one of them knew how to process the health card transactions. That caused further delay in our transaction when the one familiar with HMO transactions had to do leave and the patients’ health card transactions were just left there unprocessed on queue. They x-rayed hubby first before getting the approval from the HMO, if the transaction was declined, we would've been made to pay for his treatments. (This actually happened to us before, but that's a different story)
Update:
I have been receiving lots of comments with this blog post, some positive, echoing my not-so-great experience in this hospital and some negative. I'm assuming they are somehow connected to the hospital (staff or admin) since they kept on defending the hospital. Please understand that this is an old post, but this is what hubby and I experienced then so this blog post is about that experience. I didn't write this to bad mouth anybody or any institution. I am just sharing my experience with the hospital.
By the way, I was back again last year but this time as an outpatient with a dermatologist. I know, I know. Why come back when I was unhappy with their services before? Well the hospital is near our place, and it had great facilities. I'm not one to hold a grudge and I wanted to try the hospital again, believing it has improved since our last visit. Sadly, I had a horrible experience with the dermatologist and but will not go into details since I believe the bad work ethics of one doctor does not necessarily reflect the whole hospital's quality of service. It was very frustrating though.
That's that =)