My wife and I just had our second child on 8/24. Our first was born at Bro-Menn, and while the…read morestaff was awesome, the facilities were only so-so. We were thrilled we'd get to try out the new birthing center; the tour was awesome, and we were excited.
Well, that excitement lasted about four or five hours. It IS a gorgeous facility, with tons of natural light, and more room than I expected for our accommodations. However, we found the staff very hit-or-miss, and overall felt like we were being generally ignored. I thought it was just because they were filled to bursting, being the new shiny OB wing, but based on m m's review from 6/23, we had almost EXACTLY the same issues.
The good: The birthday cake was pretty delicious. Getting a silver spoon was kind of neat, but unnecessary. The rooms are big. Now the rest...
First, a word on the facility. While it's new, it's often ... kinda cheap. BOTH of the lights in the Dad's Corner, and one of the lights behind my wife's bed were burned out. We let them know on Wednesday and again on Thursday. When we left on Saturday around noon, they were STILL burned out. Housekeeping came in one time, on Wednesday when my wife was sleeping. They said they'd come back later, but we didn't see them again during the three-day duration of our stay. They never even came by after Catering spilled a soda near the door, and the lady notified them.
The food was another issue. We found Bro-Menn's menu to be much, much better than we both expected. OSF's is much worse. Nothing on the menu was particularly good, the soups were watery, the hot meals were tasteless, and it was overall poor to average.
All of this could have been forgiven if the nursing staff had been attentive, prompt, or personable. I would say three out of over a dozen nurses we had made a point of introducing themselves. Almost none wrote their names on the whiteboard. They dropped by as little as possible, never just checking in, and took their time getting back to us when we called. They even needed US to call THEM to remind them when my wife needed her pain medicine.
At Bro-Menn, there was one nurse for my wife and one nurse for our kid. I've been told this isn't the norm, but I thought it was great - both patients got the needed attention. Here, my wife and our new son shared a nurse. As a result, I felt like our new son was basically ignored, honestly.
A few incidents kind of stand out, but this is getting over-long. I'll just mention two, because they were the same night. My wife was (finally) able to sleep, and dozing soundly with our new son nearby. A tech came in and rather than check back later, she actually woke my wife up - whose vitals had been fine since the c-section - rather than coming back later. Either that same tech or a different one just picked our son out of bed to run vitals, too, rather than waiting until he was awake on his own. I don't know who it was - like I said, they didn't introduce themselves.
I'd say three or four out of twelve-ish nurses were anything like warm or personable. Most of the rest weren't.
New facilities and neat ads or not, I'd recommend staying away. We thought the staff was simply overworked because there were so many patients going to the shiny new center, but it seems like this is standard at OSF. We are never going back there unless we have to at this point. Bro-Menn gave us five-star care; the care here was one-star.
I added 1 star for the rooms being huge and actually comfortable. In nearly every other respect, this was a 1-star experience we don't want to repeat.
