[QUOTE=Anonymous;13844]Rich,
I couldnt agree with you more. In the last two weeks, I have had to call them twice… Once during a Red Alarm where I called NxStage and was told all reps are busy on other calls and someone would call back in 15 minutes. I said again, this is an emergency and If I wait 15 mins, my blood will clot. Any other time this would have been ok, but this was a Red Alarm where the pump had stopped. We could not figure out the problem and had to stop the treatment. I lost all of my blood that was in the lines and filter because of this. I was quite angry. The rep called back after about 15 mins. I explained the problem, and it turns out losing the blood could have been avoided and treatment could have continued. I wish we would have been told on the first call.
This was around 10am eastern.
I have called on 2 or 3 other instances during the last two months and the same thing, someone took my number and was told a rep would call me back in 15 mins.
I do my treatments between 9 and 12 noon. 2.5 hour treatments.[/QUOTE]
Rich, I know you said NO COMMENTS and I don’t want to offend you, but this is a very important subject, so I am taking the liberty to comment. Our experience with NxStage technical is just as Anonymous stated. Before choosing NxStage, we thought that NxStage would be there 24/7 to back us up if we had a technical problem. But when we got in a jam several times with my being a new home patient, they were not prompt to answer the phone. This happened to us a number of times over the first several months and I lost all the blood in the circuit on 2-3 occassions. Part of the problem is not just NxStage, but the short training we received. We just couldn’t remember everything and we were under the impression that NxStage, or our nurse trainer, were only a phone call away for back up if we needed them.
Both NxStage and our nurse trainer are supposed to be on 24 hr call. If we had a problem in the evening, we called NxStage as our nurse trainer usually doesn’t call back right away and he was new to NxStage and would tell us to call NxStage as he was as yet unfamiliar with all of NxStage machine’s operations. Also, it made us feel uncomfortable to call the nurse trainer in the evening/late evening, knowing he had probably worked a full shift, when we knew the NxStage technicians should be alert for their shift.
It was very scary getting into these jams that we could not get out of and not being able to get anyone on the phone to walk us through the procedure. Of course, if we had been trained better, rather then rushed through, we would not have been in this position in the first place. NxStage technicians apologized to us a number of times for their slowness to answer the phone and admitted they didn’t have enough technicians to cover and were working on rectifying the situation. But then they also told us theirs was NOT an emergency line.
So, we went through a lot of needless trouble and fear until we learned the tx, the hard way, and things finally settled down. With good training and good backup there shouldn’t be any problems like we experienced. I see we are not alone - didn’t think we were. I guess home trainers and NxStage don’t realize how scary it is when we home patients are not fully prepared- it is like throwing one who can not swim into a lake. Maybe they think that’s the only way to learn, but I think there are better ways. Everything is going smoothly for us now, but it was a very rocky, scary, stressful road until everything finally straightened out.We hung in there because it was so great to be doing txs at home and I was feeling so much better. But we never thought we would have to suffer this and would not have if our back up had been what it should be.