Norman and Ida Stone Institute of Psychiatry - Inpatient

“Out of all the in patient psych units I’ve been in (unfortunately three) this has been the best stay I ever had. Given its northwestern, the unit is very nice and clean. The view from my room felt like I was staying at a hotel. The food was actually really good. The staff was incredibly kind. My psychiatry team were very kind and compassionate people which I am grateful for because I have had bad experiences with psychiatrists before. Overall I am grateful to this hospital for helping me get through a very dark time in my life, almost three years later and I’ve grown so much in my mental health thank you to the medications I was put on at this hospital.”

“The WORST experience I’ve ever had dealing with medical professionals, hands down, in my life. As a family member of a former patient we were taken through the ringer with these people. The only people that were of any use to us were the nursing staff, so thank you to those folks who seemed to have the only sense of urgency, compassion, and ability to regularly communicate with us and provide us with updates. After about 5 days of having to make multiple requests through the nurses to speak to the doctor, a doctor, any doctor, we received a call from someone on the care team. The person that called me was a med student, not a doctor… a med student. This was beyond unacceptable and unimaginable that after that length of time and especially after making requests to speak directly to the either the resident or attending physician that this is who contacted us. After day 9 was the first time I was able to speak directly to a doctor. 14 days until my mother was able to speak directly to a doctor regarding the condition of her child. We had family fly across the country to be there in order to meet with and speak with their team and the only method of communication we had the entire time was via telephone. We never received any answers on the development of a formal outpatient plan, diagnosis, test results, or anything unless asked for that information. We eventually had to start demanding information from them. Calls were not returned in a timely manner (we’re talking days) from the care team. Weekend staff didn’t seem to know how to pick up a chart to read back the doctor’s notes. An MRI was administered after about 10 days of being in their care and when I asked “what was the reason for the MRI?”, the first response was “it’s been scheduled for a couple days now.” After a pause and asking a second time the response I got was, “I’m not the regular nurse so I’m not totally sure.” Based on the condition that they were in when they arrived compared to where they were at after about a week was night and day different, but apparently that wasn’t good enough for them. We didn’t get timelines of potential discharge dates and they gave zero information to the patient regarding these same things. The only thing that was happening at that point was creating a brand new stressful situation for someone to be in by keeping them in a building with no answers on when they can leave, requirements they need to fulfill in order to leave, or even providing our family with any of this information after asking multiple times. After 2 weeks of being locked in this building like a prisoner and being told they can’t leave because they were still evaluating them or we’d like to monitor them more… we had had enough. We had identified a new care facility for them to be transferred to and the first thing we started to get from them was pushback. “We don’t advise moving them out of the area because it could be difficult to reacclimate them to Chicago.” What the hell does that even mean?! They treated us as if they had total control over what was to come, when they could be discharged and essentially dictate everything that came about. Once we informed them that we were going to be removing them, whether they liked it or not and which was well within our rights and the patient’s individual rights, in order to bring them elsewhere was coincidentally the exact same time they appeared to be ready for a step-down program at the hospital. These people lined their pockets for 2 weeks on those medical benefits and did nothing for them after about day 4 that couldn’t have been tested, monitored, or evaluated at any other treatment facility anywhere in the country. Never would I ever want anyone to experience this type of treatment as a patient or as a family member. It was extremely unprofessional, sloppy, and unnecessary to have made it that difficult for us to remove them from their facility in order to bring them to a treatment center of our choosing where we believed they could receive more effective treatment. Absolutely appalling.”

“Best psychiatric clinic I’ve been to. The the doctors, social workers, OT, mental health workers, & nurses are all too notch. It’s obvious it’s not just a job for them.”

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