I don't want to speak negatively of hospitals, but I can't help comparing my recent experience here…read morewith the experience I had a little over a year ago at St. Barnabas. I can't condemn anything about the medical care I received there... I believe St. Barnabas rates as 1 of the top hospitals in the state of NJ, after all ... but parking was a nightmare, the people supposed to register me as a patient were more than a little bit impatient and unhelpful, and I thought the belligerent security guard was 1 step away from tackling me to the ground in a choke hold.
My doctor wanted me to get another echocardiogram, which I had for the 1st time a little over a year ago at Barnabas Health Ambulatory Care Center (not St. Barnabas the hospital, in this case, although it wasn't far away; it's a stone's throw from the Livingston Mall and about a mile away from the baronial estate of the late Mafia boss Ruggiero "Ritchie the Boot" Boiardo). I had no particular grievance against the Ambulatory Care Center (if I remember right, I wrote a fairly positive review about the experience), but RWJ is closer to where I live, and it's not like the Ambulatory Care Center experience was so stellar that I NEEDED to go there, as opposed to anywhere else.
I had been to RWJ a few years ago for a test when I started having digestive problems. The test was inconclusive, but I didn't blame RWJ, as my own doctor (and I like my doctor) ran a series of tests and ultimately said, "We can't find out what's wrong with you. If the problem continues, make an appointment with a gastroenterologist." Instead, I bought a bottle of Pepto Bismol, and that seemed to eradicate the issue, for the time being, anyway. Ultimately, I probably will have to see a gastroenterologist. But that's another review for a later time (after I've actually gone to one, that is).
I remembered that RWJ was off the main street, Union Ave., and I was able to locate it again without too much difficulty. I wasn't sure which building I was supposed to go to, but there was a large free outdoor parking lot. I went to the 1st nearby building, where a security guard sat. I still had the "muscle memory" of my confrontation with the St. Barnabas security guard making me tense up, but this security guard was actually very helpful and informative. I asked him if it was ok for me to park in that large free parking lot, and he said it was. When I indicated the kind of test I was there to have performed, he actually walked me to the main pathway, told me to walk to the end of it, and the part of the hospital I needed to go to was there.
Inside that part of RWJ, I waited on a small line, but it didn't take long before I was in front of a representative. She signed me in quickly, took a photo for my brand new RWJ I.D., and affixed a white "patient strip" around my wrist. She then directed me to the elevator, told me what floor I needed to get to, and where exactly I had to go once I reached that floor. Couldn't have been easier.
Upstairs in the cardiac center, I was efficiently registered, told how long my wait would be, and directed to a comfortable waiting area. (My 1 complaint would be that they had 1 magazine available to read; it was People, which I detest. Two thirds of the "celebrities" within its pages are "beautiful" ciphers I've never heard of, and hopefully never will hear of again. Remember when People sometimes wrote stories of importance and gravity? Yeah, I'm old enough to remember those ancient, bygone days...)
At 1 point, the lady who had registered me came over and apologized that the wait would be a little longer than anticipated. The extra wait time didn't bother me...I anticipate a wait anytime I go to a doctor or hospital...but I appreciated the gesture.
Before too long, the pleasant young woman performing the echocardiogram brought me in. It's not a colonoscopy (which is unpleasant but not painful), and it's certainly not agonizing in any way, but I wouldn't exactly call it something to look forward to. I'm lying on my side, shirt off, with my fish-white flesh exposed and my flabby belly hanging out (my youthful days of lifting weights and running 6 miles every other day are obviously long behind me), while she leaned over me, probing my gelled-up chest with a probe or wand or whatever it's called, monitoring the heart's activity on a screen. When I went for the test a year ago in Livingston, the amplified sound of my own heart freaked me out, but the person performing the test then gave no indication that anything could be done about it. This time, when I mentioned how that sound bothered me, the woman performing the test said, "Oh, I can shut off the sound, so you don't have to hear it." Again, I appreciated the gesture.
All in all, my experience at RWJ was much more positive than my encounter at St. Barnabas. Parking wasn't an ordeal, and everyone I encountered was helpful and at least relatively friendly.
I have no problem coming here again, if I have to.
