Just when you think you’ve seen it all some company or some person sets a new, more miserable, standard for horrific customer service. However, having said that, I think the event I am about to tell you about has hit the absolute BOTTOM of customer care and decent human behavior, and may never be further denigrated.

I encourage you to watch the following 2 minute video.

Hospital personnel dismissed this woman from the hospital, while she had nothing on but one of the butt-showing hospital robes, and left her at a bus stop. And , the  hospital didn’t throw her out. A hospital cannot throw a person out because a hospital is a building. HUMAN BEINGS that work at the hospital threw the woman out of the place. Regardless of what the policy or procedure is for removing, or dismissing, someone from the facility,  it is still incumbent upon decent, human behavior to treat another human being with some minimal level of dignity and respect.

After watching the video I have to ask if these people do this all the time and if so, how in the world do they sleep at night?  A more important question would be ‘how do the C suite executives and administrators sleep at night’? I ask that question because I happened to bump into the hospital’s mission statement. Mission statements are usually authored by the C suite people and are sure to be self-laudatory and self-praising.  After watching the video, if you can stomach reading it, here is part of The University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus mission statement:

Our team of more than 500 doctors and 1,000 employees cares for each patient with expertise and passion. We also partner with community groups, churches, health fairs, and schools to bring health education and other services to the Baltimore area.

So, they partner with churches and bring health education to the Baltimore area. I would venture that their best partners include the city bus service since that seems to be to whom they drop off their former patients. Maybe they get a rebate from the bus system to help defray the loss of the hospital gown the poor women in the video was wearing.

What has happened to dignity and respecting people in our healthcare system?  I ask that question knowing that some of our facilities and systems provide the very best in service and respect to the patient, but shouldn’t that be an absolute minimum everywhere??!!

Just the other day I went to visit an old grade school friend at a hospital in Louisville. My dear friend has had cerebral palsy her entire life. She is the most courageous person I have ever known and full of nothing but life and glee.  I walked into this hospital in Louisville, having passed the front entrance where I read the hospital’s boisterous mission statement.  Upon leaving my friends room,  I stepped over to the station outside her room to ask about her condition and how she was doing.  The manner of the person that fielded my question would have you think I stuck my thumb in their soup.  I wanted to drag that person by the nose down to the front lobby, so they could familiarize themselves with the mission statement.

At least I didn’t get thrown out and left at the bus stop.