Visiting Nurse Service of New York Performance Failures New York New York

The Visiting Nurse Service of New York(VNSNY) failed to provide me with timely, high quality, residential post-operation Nursing, Physical Therapy, and Personal Healthcare Assistant Services per the earlier Agreement which was based on the instructions of my Surgeon. VNSNY was supposed to meet with me(the patient) at the Hospital after surgery but prior to discharge to establish a services delivery schedule that would begin immediately upon return to my residence. It was important to avoid lapses in post-operation patient monitoring. VNSNY however did not show up for this planned scheduling meeting with me at the hospital.

The VNSNY Nurse first met with me at my residence TWO DAYS after my hospital discharge. My surgery was major. I was non-ambulatory, taking strong pain-killer medication, and I was a senior citizen living alone. No check of my health condition was made however by VNSNY during the first two days after hospital discharge. The VNSNY personal healthcare assistant first showed up at my residence FIVE DAYS after my hospital discharge. Since I was non-ambulatory I was unable during this FIVE DAY period to perform a number of daily life support tasks.

I experienced many other problems with VNSNY. The perfunctory nurse examinations missed detecting  several health issues. A significant numer of appointments for the respective services were cancelled/rescheduled by VNSNY. There were several cases where the VNSNY service person simply did not show up for their scheduled appointments without even calling me beforehand. The medical and administrative information provided by VNSNY was inadequate and I had to call(extensively) my Surgeon's office and my Health Insurance provider to answer questions about my case and treatment.

VNSNY at one point actually cancelled all my services(without telling me beforehand) because they erroneously determined that my Health Insurance had expired. I was/am a 30 year client in good standing of the same Health Insurance provider and had to call them regarding the VNSNY coverage cancellation claim. My Health Insurance provider then advised VNSNY of their error  and my services were restored after a lapse of time. My Health Insurance provider then told me directly that they had assigned both a case manager and one of their staff nurses to frequently monitor my VNSNY treatment activities and that I would be contacted regularly by these two individuals. These contacts in fact regularly occurred and represented further demands on my time resulting from the underlying VNSNY performance failures.

I made many attempts to resolve these  problems with VNSNY as they were occurring. These attempts were uniformly unsuccessful and I found VNSNY extremely difficult to deal with. There were extremely long telephone wait/hold times and I was unable to find any VNSNY staff that were knowledgeable, willing to become involved with the problems, and empowered to solve the problems. I have since filed formal written complaints with the chairman of VNSNY, the president, two senior vice presidents, and vice president. My formal complaints have however been ignored to date.