A Gold Hill couple’s experience at Rowan Regional Medical Center’s emergency room has prompted the hospital to examine its procedures for handling patients.
Shelia and Marvin Dry disagree with hospital officials about how long they waited the night of Jan. 18; the couple says six hours, the hospital says 3 1/2 at most.
But the Drys ended up driving to Stanly Memorial Hospital in Albemarle, where they say a doctor talked to them 30 minutes after they arrived.
The doctor ordered a series of tests and determined that Dry had a hole in his colon and needed surgery. The hospital called in a surgeon, and Shelia Dry said her husband emerged from the operating room around 8:30 a.m.
Shelia Dry says she would have understood if someone at Rowan Regional had come out and explained that the emergency room was busy. Then they could have decided if they wanted to wait or go elsewhere.
“Why didn’t somebody come out and say, ‘Look folks, we’re swamped and we know you’re in pain and agony,’ ” she said. “My husband was sitting there in pain.
“I would have felt a little bit better about it if they had shown a little concern. ... For people to trust a hospital, they need to know what is going on in it.”
Rowan Regional spokesman Phil Whitesell said emergency room records show that Marvin Dry came in at 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 18. The triage nurse who initially screens everyone coming into the emergency room found Dry’s vital signs were normal, and he was not rated an urgent case, Whitesell said.
Fifteen people were already in the emergency room when the Drys arrived, including several “trauma cases” from an automobile accident. Whitesell said 19 more people came to the emergency room between 5:30 and 9 p.m., when records show hospital personnel went to check on Marvin Dry. Records indicate they could not find Dry.
Whitesell said the emergency room manager called the Drys this week, and “they had a cordial conversation.”
“Unfortunately, we were not able to get to Mr. Dry in a reasonable period of time, and we’re examining our admitting process in the department to hopefully avoid any situation like this in the future,” Whitesell said.
Whitesell said the average wait time in Rowan Regional’s emergency room is two hours and the national average is 2 hours 40 minutes.
“We’re better than the national average, but people still need to understand that if they don’t have a medical emergency, they may wait. They should call their family physician first,” Whitesell said.
The Drys’ local doctor closes his office on Thursdays and they didn’t know any other place to go, Shelia Dry said.
“We were expecting to wait an hour or even two,” Shelia Dry said. She says they arrived around 5 p.m., with several people in front of them.
The admitting nurse took his vital signs and Marvin Dry told her of his pain. Marvin Dry has health insurance through his employer, Allied Waste in Harrisburg. He is also diabetic.
Shelia Dry acknowledges that she never asked the admitting nurse or the clerks who take insurance information to check on her husband’s status. But she said they watched other people become frustrated and leave after trying to get information.
She said one man brought in his daughter, who was crying. Hospital personnel gave her a container and she threw up at least once in the waiting room, Shelia Dry said. The man waited “an hour or two” and tried to find out when his daughter might see a doctor.
“He finally picked her up and walked out,” she said. At least one other family left in frustration, she said.
Shelia Dry said she heard the admitting nurse “tell someone that we had to consider the ambulances that were coming in. Three ambulances came in while we were sitting there. ... I’ve since been told that there was a bad accident.”
But the Drys don’t think that excuses the hospital staff from communicating with people who were waiting. And despite the hospital’s records, the Drys say they didn’t give up until 11 p.m.
“What was I supposed to do, get up in the middle of the room and jump and holler?” she asks. “You know what they would have done if I had done that.”
They returned briefly to their home on Culp Road, but Marvin Dry’s pain was no better, she said, and they decided to try Stanly Memorial.
“We were down there about 30 minutes and we were talking to a doctor,” Shelia Dry said. The doctor ordered a CT scan, which required getting Dry ready and then having someone read the film, she said.
Shelia Dry recalled the doctor asking if they wanted the good news or the bad news first. They asked for the bad, and he told them Marvin Dry had a “hole in his colon.”
“ ‘The good news is I’ve called a surgeon, and he’s on the way,’ ” Shelia Dry remembered the doctor said. “ ‘We’ll have you in surgery in less than 30 minutes.’ ”
Before Marvin Dry went into surgery around 7 a.m., Roy Hinson, president of Stanly Memorial, came to the emergency room and introduced himself to the couple, Shelia Dry said. They still have his business card, and Hinson came by Marvin Dry’s room later to check on him.
Shelia Dry was impressed.
“At Stanly, they didn’t know us from peaturkey,” she said. “I’m sure they have their problems, and the guy told us that sometimes they get hectic, too.”
Hinson confirmed that Marvin Dry had surgery at Stanly Memorial early on Jan. 19 and that he talked to the couple. He didn’t want to comment further.
Ben Jolly, a spokesman for Stanly Memorial, said the hospital has never studied the average time people in its emergency room wait until they see a doctor.
“It depends on the patient and what other patients you have in your emergency room at the time,” Jolly said. “You have to prioritize them.”
The wait in emergency room “is something that people at all hospitals complain about,” Jolly said. “It’s just one of those things that you hear.”
For people who don’t have regular doctors, Rowan Regional offers a 24-hour free service called Nurse on Duty. People can call 1-800-335-4921 toll free and talk to a registered nurse.
“If they don’t have a doctor and wonder whether they should go to the emergency room, the nurse on call has access to a huge computer data base they can consult on all sorts of ailments,” Whitesell said.
The hospital also offers a free referral service for people looking for a doctor. People can call the hospital’s Physician Referral Line during regular office hours on weekdays — or leave a voice mail — after hours, and the hospital will refer them to a doctor who is accepting new patients, Whitesell said.
That number is 704-210-5628.
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