Berkshire Medical Center

This review is based upon the ER only.
I’m from out of town & don’t know this area at all. I unfortunately needed a trip to the ER based on my Drs advice. I went to Unilocal which is my «go to» for literally everything.
This is the nearest hospital but after reading the reviews I was pretty nervous. I was thinking … «Ok. I’ll go… Get their diagnosis & either drive home or find another hospital if need be. I was thinking «I’m going to a terrible hospital, alone & I’m already nervous about my medical condition.
I went at noon on Wednesday 6÷15÷16. I expected to wait a long time based upon the other Unilocal reviews.
I’m happy to say… My experience was very different from the others !
I walked in… Went to the front desk & did the initial paperwork & then they immediately took me to triage. That took 5 minutes then into the ER I went.
My PA was Bill Buckinwald (I’m sure I’ve butchered his name) he arrived in my room maybe 10 minutes later. He could not have been more professional, had a better bedside manner or been more engaging. He put me at ease immediately. He explained exactly what was necessary … Which test etc.
My nurse… Cannot remember her name… Was also very professional, kind & exactly the type of nurse you’d hope to get.
Every person that I met in this hospital could not have been kinder or more professional. And… The place was very clean.
I’m not a Dr or a hospital person. The mere thought of going causes me anxiety. I’d rather stick needles in my eyes then go to a dr. And… After reading the other Unilocal reviews … It just added to my nervousness.
My advise … If you’re from out of town & need an ER… Do not hesitate to go here. I hope you have the same experience as I!
PS… I’m going to live

Be careful about sending flowers. Get even one letter wrong in the name and they send them away. Ridiculous. You think they would make an effort to figure out who the flowers were meant for rather than returning them to be destroyed. Very bureaucratic for a small operation.

Horrible service, I was on hold just to get an operator for 16 minutes. Finally someone picked up and said sorry, they were short staffed. This place is ridiculous, if this is how they’re customer service is, I wouldn’t trust their doctors.

Waited 6+ hrs in the ED. Kidney stone had me hurting.
It’s a really dirty hospital. At 2am, i had Nester the P.A. He was zero help, rude and lacks any empathy for patients. He should be fired. I went home in agony. I will go after Nester and BMC legally. I taped it — They will settle.

Very Poor service and left me lingering in severe pain for hours before helping me.

Utterly disgusted with this hospital and the amount of incompetence I experienced.
I’m pregnant, and was feeling very sick i.e., feverish, sore throat, could barely talk, dizziness. Basically felt like hell.
The nurses in triage were great, and got things done right away, even did a swab right there.
But then I get put in a room to wait 4 hours to be told that the test was negative. Before that I kept getting nurses telling them my deep concern for the fact that I’m pregnant and feeling this sick. All they did was to tell me to wait, and wait, and wait.
Finally saw a nurse and he told me that the doctor would be in soon. And that’s it.
Really? No one can tell me my results, also the nurse tried telling me the results weren’t ready yet, mind you this was after the 3 hours of my wait.
No, I don’t think so.
Finally, the doctor comes in like I said after 4 hours.
Checks me, tells me to see my primary Monday, and tells me he’ll give me liquid Tylenol and discharge me.
We wait almost ANOTHER hour just for that.
I walked out. I’m not sacrificing my sleep and having the hospital make this stress even worse on me because they can’t be bothered to tell me a single thing until 4 hours later when I’m ready to yell at them.
And I’m supposed to be giving birth here, yeah, I don’t know if I can even trust them with that at this point.
Thanks for nothing, BMC.

I would trust this hospital with my life. They saved my wife’s life. You are good hands when you go here. I understand that the other reviewers had negative experiences here, but I just have to be honest. I did not. When I passed a nurse in the hallway, he or she always smiled and said hello. My wife’s needs were completely met. I was so happy with my experience here that I wrote them a personal letter and I received a response from them within a couple of days.

Based upon the numerous accounts of other people we know, in addition to our own recent experience at BMC, it’s been decided that the family I have living in Pittsfield will go elsewhere if and when they need a hospital, even though BMC is only a few miles from their house.
Husband and I were out of town visiting the grand state of MA the day after he started having severe stomach pains. My husband is averse to any medical intervention, so when he mentioned he *might* finally want to go to the ER, I knew this was serious. Fearing it may be appendicitis, I laid on the pressure and we went.
At first glance, the staff at BMC seemed outstanding. Every nurse, doctor, receptionist, stretcher-​pusher and janitor we encountered seemed very warm, friendly and professional. I thought I might be giving them a 4 star review, and maybe even 5 if they were able to fix the problem in a timely fashion.
So they examined him, got his stats, ran a few tests, checked his blood and offered him some pain pills, all with great bedside manner. He declined the painkillers, not wanting to lose sense of any changes in the pain — good or bad. They finally decided to do a CT scan. We waited for the results. Waited and waited, and were finally told that they didn’t see anything at all. He was again offered pain pills, handed literature on early stages of appendicitis, and told to come back if the pain continued or worsened.
A couple days later, we were back home and the pain was still going strong. We went to one of our preferred local hospitals this time, and they were also stumped after checking Husband’s blood and examining him. Because a CT scan exposes a patient to so much radiation (equivalent to about 500 x-​rays), Hospital #2 did not want to do another one so soon. So they sought out the records from BMC. In the meantime, they admitted Husband, not wanting to release him without a real diagnosis, considering the severity of his pain. What a novel idea.
The records from BMC finally arrived, and it was noted that the CT scan showed inflammation in Husband’s intestine. I’ll say that again in case you missed it. The CT scan showed inflammation in Husband’s intestine. Very interesting that BMC never mentioned a word about that. The Doctor at Hospital #2 was overheard saying to his staff that his 6-​year-​old daughter could do a better write-​up than the doctor at BMC.
So, Hospital #2 treated Husband with some antibiotics, and low and behold, he saw some improvement rather quickly. They brought in the GI Specialist to see him. They kept him overnight, gave him more antibiotics, and the following afternoon, the pain had disappeared. The final verdict? A bacterial infection caused by eating contaminated food.
Because I like to summarize, here are the reasons I don’t like BMC: 1. While they went through the motions and made sure my husband was not dying, they made no effort to REALLY find a cause for his severe stomach pain. 2. They offered no solution other than narcotic painkillers. And as as it turned out, the problem was solved with some simple antibiotics. 3. The staff is probably so nice because they’re all doped up on painkillers. Not really. But maybe. 4. They gave him a CT scan, which is not something you do for the hell of it because of the high level of radiation, and they told him they saw NOTHING. Either they lied, or they didn’t really look.
And in conclusion, BMC sucks.

I came to the BMC after some guy crashed into my car last year. The initial EMTs were fine, but I was in complete and utter shock, as tends to happen after car crashes, so I wouldn’t know either way.
As soon as we got there, we had to wait in a hallway while I was on a stretcher and trying to figure out what was going on before they found an actual room for me. I was having trouble breathing, so one of the nurses put one of those oxygen things into my nose, but it promptly fell out and I couldn’t get it back in (nor did any nurse or doctor offer to help me).
Once I had an actual room, it took FOREVER for the doctor to come and ask me some questions. I seriously think I was lying on that bed for a few hours while the nurses switched shifts before any doctor came. He asked me some questions and clearly didn’t believe my answers, because after he left one of the nurses told me they had to draw my blood for a pregnancy test (despite my ASSURANCE I was not pregnant, nor could I be). The unnecessary blood test added another two hours at least.
The people who gave me my CT scan failed to realize my sweatshirt had metal on it, so they shocked me pretty badly. The women who took an x-​ray of my leg were rude. And when I was finally discharged, after hours and hours of lying around and being ignored, the doctor gave me some painkillers, but underestimated the extent of damage my tailbone sustained, because it still hurts to this day and he said it would heal soon. Not to mention he was mean, too.
To top it all off, I really had to pee for the entire stay, and no one would help me get to the bathroom – despite the fact that my tailbone was badly injured so I couldn’t «use a bedpan” – one of the nurse’s suggestions. And when I finally got to the bathroom, it was dirty and smelly.
Obviously if you’re going to the hospital you might not have a choice of where you go, but this place is run terribly and employs people who comletely lack bedside manner and expeditiousness.