When it comes to talking about a place such as this, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is far more…read morethan just one single hospital. It's an entire medical "city", if you will. As such, this review will be broken down into the following categories: the staff and the medical services they provide, the overall layout and atmosphere of the facility itself, and, of course....the quality of cuisine offered at the local food court.
Before I start though, a small caveat worth mentioning: when I first researched this facility, I quickly discovered there are (once again) TWO Yelp pages dedicated to the same facility. And yes, I checked--it's definitely the SAME place, save for "one" vs "1" in the address line.
Regardless, it's pretty bizarre how the "one" is holding a 1.8 star average at the time of writing this review. Whereas, this page here ranks closer to how I would rate them. For context, the majority of reviews on the former consist mostly of folks who discuss individual experiences. Whether or not these are entirely accurate isn't for me to judge. But it's worth taking note that individual experiences are, indeed, anecdotal in the much larger picture. Not even MY reviews are totally sacrosanct. I just give my opinion in the most entertaining way I know how. In the end, we can all agree to disagree, if we must.
With that disclaimer out of the way, we can go over what I personally experienced here. We'll start with the thing I liked least about Dartmouth..
Overall layout: Whilst the interior of this medical facility is very well sanitized and easy enough to navigate through, the same cannot be said about their labyrinth of a parking lot. When we first pulled up, we actually parked in a totally different wing, apparently.
See, we were here to get a surgical procedure done for my son's shoulder. I guess the department that handles most surgeries is located near 4W. This series of buildings being essentially its own town isn't so much a problem in and of itself. Navigating the streets within said town, however, is a f*#king train wreck! I swear...I missed my turn 4 separate times over because the signs are confusing in the way they are oriented. I know for a fact I'm not the only one who experienced this either because as I was watching other drivers navigating, well....it was a bit like watching the bumper cars at Canobie Lake Park. I'm not really sure what the solution should be here. I just know whatever they have in place now is all but completely broken.
Moving onto the staff and their services, everyone here was nothing short of professional and accommodating. They took very good care of my son and that's all I could ask for. It was also cool seeing all the advancements in medical technology they have on site. Clearly, the funding here is copious. This would have already earned them all the stars if not for the parking lot faux pas.
Lastly, we can discuss the food court real quick. Since surgery was projected to last a minimum of 2 hours, we checked out two places: The Works Cafe (which is basically breakfast sandwiches and other things) and Sbarro (self explanatory).
Long story short: the former is slightly better than the latter, but both are about what you would expect in a typical medical facility. Sbarro claims to have NY style pizza. But anyone who's lived in NH for longer than 6 months will understand that our options for legit NY style pizza (much less, good pizza in general) are few and far between. BLUF: this stuff ain't it, but comes close enough. 6 out of 10.
The Works Cafe has a lot more options, IMHO. The bagel sandwich I had was...fine. I just wish they knew how NOT to burn the grains on an onion bagel. I was, however, grateful the coffee didn't suck. They offer lots of brew selections, actually! 7 out of 10.
Anyway, that's been my experience here at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. I'm not sure why that other page has so many negative reviews or why this place even has two pages to begin with. I'm not sure if the complaints were 100% legit or if at least a portion of them were written by a bunch of over-complaining "Karens". All I have are my two-cents, for whatever that's worth. And I'm here to tell you....this place ain't that bad, even in spite of its flaws. Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Lebanon gets 4 newly repaired shoulder joints out of 5.
