ST. LOUIS — Injected and abandoned. That's what one St Louis woman said happened to her when she went to a local hospital for a cardiac stress test.
She ended up in the emergency room after that test. Now she's fighting to get that hospital to change the way it treats patients.
Find some shade near St. Mary's Hospital, and you'll probably find Janet Ayers.
For the past three weeks, she said she's made it her business to sit in her wheelchair outside the heart center on Bellevue Avenue handing out flyers and warning others.
"I thought I'd be safe in their care. I thought I would not wake up on the concrete," said Ayers.
But that's exactly what Ayers says happened to her after getting a routine cardiac stress test at the SSM St. Mary's Health Center.
Ayers suffers from two rare, painful nerve disorders called
Conditions she said she warned her nurse about before getting her stress test.But she said the staff looked overworked and rushed and they ignored her warnings.
"I thought if I was injected with something, they would let me lay down. And that there would be someone attending me. I was given an injection. I told the woman 'I'm dizzy,' and she walked away," said Ayers.
Ayers said she woke up in agonizing pain. She fell face first onto the concrete floor.
"I suffered tremendously. My hip came out of socket. I landed on my shoulder, I landed on my face. My nose was all swollen. I almost got black eyes," Ayers said.
Ayers said after she passed out, the staff put her into an ambulance and that ambulance took her across the street. Just a few hundred feet.
The bill for that ambulance ride? Several hundred dollars.
"They didn't even call the next day to see how I was doing," said Ayers.
But after just a few days of protesting, Ayers said the president of the hospital agreed to pay for her ambulance and ER bills.
But it isn't about money for Ayers.
She wants the hospital to improve patient care
"I call it assembly-line medicine. They're bringing four patients back at a time to do the test. They're not paying attention. So the public needs to know," said Ayers.
Statement from SSM Health
SSM Health is committed to providing the best, safest care possible to every person who comes to us. However, due to federal patient privacy laws, we are unable to discuss details of any patient’s care.
We can assure you that every patient seen in our SSM Health Heart and Vascular Care office receives individual attention and care from our clinicians. All of our exam rooms have a bed and chairs, and our patients are encouraged to rest both before and after testing, as needed, while continuing to be monitored by our team.
