Beatriz Báez | The doctor will, in fact, not see you now

I often feel guilty taking time for myself, fearing that it will delay me in my academic work. This same mindset led my friend, who fell incredibly sick, to not seek medical attention until late at night after her last class. As the day progressed, her health grew worse and worse, but she failed to find any University facility that was open at around 9 p.m. Upon calling Penn Medicine services, her only option seemed to be the emergency department of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). 

She asked me and a friend to accompany her. Once we arrived, the waiting room was packed to the brim with only a few chairs available. The people within the room were visibly in pain and extremely sick, with one patient continuously vomiting while we were seated. Upon checking in, I told my friend to ask the receptionist what the wait time would be. The receptionist hesitated to answer the question until he finally confessed that the maximum somebody had waited that day was seven hours. We estimated we could expect at least a five-hour wait. 

This meant my friend would most likely be attended to around 2 a.m.: for a check-up of unknown length to then be dispatched and have to go to an 8:30 a.m. class. We stayed in the waiting room for about 30 minutes before realizing my friend’s appointment would be a lost cause. My friend then decided to leave and self-medicate back at her dorm. When we reached the reception desk, I saw around four employees working in the emergency room, and the woman who checked us out told us that she wasn’t even a nurse.

The medical care center dedicated to University students closes at 8 p.m. three days a week, with the remaining days varying with earlier closing times and closed for the entirety of Sunday. For an institution that claims to have a division committed to “offering a wide range of opportunities to access support, clinical resources,” these resources seem heavily limited and scarce. 

As I became increasingly concerned about the efficiency of the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS), I sought to find other students willing to share their experiences within these institutions. I found that my friend’s incident was anything but a one-off. UPHS has a continuous pattern of extensive wait times, which seemingly do not even shorten in extreme cases. 

For instance, one College sophomore detailed her experience visiting the HUP emergency room three times during her time at Penn. The student was experiencing peritonsillar abscess, a condition requiring immediate, critical medical attention, and failure to receive it only worsens the said condition. Nevertheless, the student failed to find that attention at HUP. On one occasion, she arrived at the emergency room around 3 p.m. on Monday but did not leave until 1 p.m. on Tuesday. It took six hours for her to get a bed and eight hours to see a doctor.

“Nurses would come into my room every hour or so to ask me questions or adjust the liquid IV or check vitals, which left long periods of being alone,” the student explained. “I found that terrifying since the condition I had made my voice unintelligible, so communicating with staff outside my room was nearly impossible.” After waiting extensive periods, she was left unattended in a state where she could not speak against her treatment.

On two separate occasions, one 22-hour visit and one 12-hour visit to the emergency room, the student’s medical attention was severely delayed for a condition that only worsens with time even though the required treatment takes less than an hour.

These aforementioned instances are just distinct examples of what is an extremely prevalent and unfortunate pattern within UPHS care. The issue stems from an institutional level issue like being severely understaffed, rather than employee fault by any means. The current dynamic of UPHS seems to be everything but the “superior patient care” or the “responsive, hands-on care” that HUP claims “allows [them] to tailor treatment specifically to individual patient needs.” 

The current status of UPHS needs to be extensively restructured to solve this inefficiency and have patients be attended to in a timely manner. Although not all patients have negative experiences, there are enough testimonials (and a 2.5 Yelp rating for the HUP) to demonstrate that there is great dissatisfaction with the manner the current system operates. An institution with around 29,000 total students should have proper mechanisms in place to ensure not only these students' well-being but also all UPHS patients at large.

BEATRIZ BÁEZ is a College first year studying mathematics and political science from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her email is beabaez@sas.upenn.edu.