Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center

My daughter has had a leg amputation here and the doctors and nurses have taken such wonderful care of her and she is healing up incredibly well. The CNA's are outstanding, the cafe staff and even the housekeepers are all nice! Everyone is friendly and helpful, even asking me if I need anything. I appreciate all the hard work and dedication the medical team exhibits. I'm so thankful and relieved to see her needs being met and that she is very well taken care of. It's made a traumatic situation that much more bearable.

I went in due to kidney stones, well at the time I was unsure, the pain was so severe I couldn't sit still, I was vomiting, and couldn't think about anything else. When I arrived the paramedics informed the nurse I have IBS, while I was sitting on the ER bed I overheard her say something along the lines of people with IBS overreacting and that "We are going to be hearing him groaning and screaming all night." Ive never had a kidney stone, so I was worried perhaps my appendix burst or something because the pain was beyond anything I have ever felt. For 3 hours no one addressed the pain, I puked and writhed on that bed without aid. Finally they gave me something but it didnt aid the pain just made me drowsy, they brought me to the mri where they discovered I had a kidney stone and it seems only then did they take my pain seriously. But because they gave me that other pain medicine I couldn't get anything for a while. It wasnt until the day staff came that I felt like I was treated like a person in pain. At this point the doctor came in and noticed me shaking, he asked if I had a fever I said no but that I was in a lot of pain, he finally got me some proper pain relief and the nurse was very friendly. Idk why the night staff treated me this way, but I had the worst night of my life there, and I felt that both the paramedics and night staff did not take me seriously that I was in genuine pain, my family believes its because of my appearance as I have Enamel Hypoplasia so my teeth look bad as if I use which I do not, but they think this was the cause of me being treated this way. If so its not fair to treat me as someone trying yo get some fix simply because of appearance. You have no clue what I have or live with and you have no right to treat me that way. I want to thank the day staff for being so helpful, but not the night staff.

My friend went into the emergency room and got scheduled for an emergency appendectomy later in the evening. They took them back to surgery and we later received a call that didn't come through about their surgery status and when we tried to return the call the line was unreachable. I'm not sure what hospital protocols are but to have a line not available for call back on a status update after a patients surgery is extremely concerning. No message, no second attempt to call just dead silence. We resorted to calling the main line and after giving the main receptionist the patients name, they played telephone with us through 3 different departments each one claiming they had no idea where the patient was. When they finally said they'd get information for us, the receptionist hung up on us. When we called back, they then proceeded to sent us to a line that rang the entirety of the drive over to the hospital and then dropped because no one picked up after 20 minutes of ringing. When we finally arrived to the ER the receptionist told us she didn't know where he was and brought us back to the nurses station, they then proceeded to tell us he had already left, which was untrue, his car was still in the ER parking lot. The nurses had no clue what was going on and were extremely blunt and unprofessional. After 5 minutes of talking the nurses sent us to the 3rd floor with the instruction of "just look around to find reception" still not informing us of our friend's health status or current location. Finally after calling the surgery department we were informed that he was in recovery and waiting to wake up. No one told us if surgery went well or anything else just blunt unprofessional responses. This place is a total disaster that seems extremely mismanaged. If you value your love one's health, go somewhere else.

Dr Jester (clown just like his name suggests) diagnosed me with anxiety when my shortness of breath was in fact influenza A. Never bothered to run a respiratory panel. Failed to address my sustained heart rate of 48 or any of my abnormal labs, like low potassium, elevated BNP, ketones, etc. Not surprising though, this is the same ER that told me I was fine and go home in Feb 2022 when I was actually in DKA and almost died the next day. Negative stars.

Takes months to be scheduled, just to find out that even with top notch insurance coverage they still want to charge thousands of dollars for procedures. I have a letter directly from my insurance company (Cigna) stating procedures are fully covered. Pre-registration basically said: "Looks like you're covered, you will owe $5,000, would you like to pay now or at check in? "