Quantity horrible care at CHC

On April 11, 2016, my father made a 911 call because my mother’s blood sugar reading was very low at 39. Despite giving her carbs and sugar, it was still not rising. The Fire and EMS both responded to my house. There were four men that were gathered at our porch.

I wish I could tell you who they were, but they had no identification, no badges, no name tags. The only thing they had in common was they were all wearing the same designed T-shirts and the same low-cut hairdo. I was informed that the low reading might be due to an equipment malfunction or low battery. They repeatedly stated that. I then asked “Well, where’s your equipment so you can check to see what it reads on your machine?” One of them stated, “Oh, sorry we lost ours about 2-3 days ago and we keep asking for a replacement and we still haven’t received it.”

What? You respond to a 911 call regarding low blood sugar readings and you have no glucometer? What in the world is happening to our healthcare? The hospital care is horrific and now even the responding EMS team is ill-equipped? Sure, they checked her BP and O2 Sats but is that what they were primarily called to attend to? By the time my mom got to the ER her CBG was 31. She was given a shot of glucose and brought it up to 114. It was checked again an hour later and it went back down to 79. I was then told by the ER nurse, your mom needs to eat soup, bread, and drink some juice. OK, well where is it? Why are you not bringing what she needs? He said “You can buy some downstairs.” What? Excuse me? I have never in my life been to an ER and was told to go provide your own stuff to bring your own mother’s blood sugar level up. My mother was discharged without waiting to see if her numbers would go back up. I have now been to the CHC ER twice during my visit to Saipan, first for my brother then for my mother and each time was a horrendous experience! I hope our EMS team gets their equipment replaced. Are there not any quality assurance checks being done to ensure the ambulance is ready to go fully equipped? Someone dropped the ball and who do you think suffers because of it? And who does quality assurance checks on CHC? There is no quality there just a quantity of horrible care.

Caroline Aldan
Via email