Review: Coney Island Hospital

My visit to Coney Island Hospital was not as smiley as their welcome picture on their website suggests (above) but it went smoothly all the same. I had sprained my foot on the way home from vacation and waited to get home before doing anything about it.

I had tried to find a doctor in Sheepshead Bay/Homecrest area who had a staff fluent in English, but couldn’t find anyone. (I had a terrible experience years ago with an American dr. whose nurses only spoke Chinese. When the dr. left the room…)

My foot was swollen and painful by the time I got to the ER, but it didn’t qualify as an emergency. The registration/triage staff was helpful, and got me into a dr.’s hands with only about an hour wait.

Once inside, the dr. made sure I was taken around to the xray with a wheel chair. The orderlies who pick you up and drop you off were a little slow, but perhaps they were a bit understaffed.

My dr. knew what she was doing, and seemed to have time for me and everyone else who needed care.

If you take someone to Coney Island Hospital, and want to hang out with them inside the actual hospital and not the waiting area, you have to go to the desk and ask for a visitor pass. No one will offer you one. You have to take care of it yourself.

The art in the hospital was terrible. But art in hospitals is like first aid kits in museums–old, ugly and not given much thought.

All in all, I felt well taken care of at Coney Island Hospital. The staff was pleasant, friendly, efficient and nicely chatty. They weren’t too understaffed or overcrowded.

But I still hope I won’t have to visit there any time soon.