My mom visited the SSM Lake St. Louis ED in March for a chronic cough that she was starting to be concerned about. She sat in an exam room for nearly 7 hours without being given any water before Dr. Poggemier came into the room and told her that the chest x-ray he'd ordered didn't show anything, and to please not use the ED as a primary care facility (she had a primary doctor whom she saw regularly, and that doctor was the one to recommend going to urgent care or a hospital).

She died less than a month later of acute hypoxic respiratory failure, from one of the worst cases of double pneumonia the doctors at SLU hospital had seen a quite a long time. If the pneumonia had been caught sooner, they told me, she'd have had a better chance of survival.

If he'd been a little less dismissive, a lot less arrogant, and much more concerned about patient care rather than pontificating about patients using "precious hospital resources," she might still be alive today.

Submitted Aug. 1, 2021

I have been to the Emergency Department several times, and he and the otheres there are always very good, and help me, even with what they are dealing with that goes on there. They helped me find the Volunteers Clinic because I don't have health insurance now, which helped me.

Submitted July 20, 2015

If you don't have insurance or worse have had a problem with drug addiction then be prepared to be treated like detritus. I have actually had the bad luck of seeing this jerk in the ER many more times than would be normal with a staff of fifteen doctors. The last time I saw him I had not been taken under the care of medicaid/medicare and he told me that the E.R. wasn't the place to show up to and expect diagnostic equipment care. Two weeks later a CAT scan at St. Josephs would begin the testing that revealed the gallstone lodged in my intra-hepatic billiary duct. The same doc that told me that compazine and thorazine aren't the same type of drug (phenothiozine) outright lie, and worst the doctor who refused to help me with a bad grease burn on my right hand because I was taking methadone. I had just started treatment at that time so I didn't know to call him (once again) a liar to his face. Hospitals actually keep special medicine and/or doses of meds on hand to treat patients with high opiate tolerance. After all do you expect this guy would tell a cancer patient that since they were taking morphine that they would just have to tough the pain out? It was a burn...the jackass even went so far to give me Ultram which causes a partial antagonistic effect to methadone. I get to think of this guy every time I look at that scar.

Submitted Oct. 5, 2014

I saw this doctor in the ER and he was very helpful and caring, and helped me greatly!

Submitted July 15, 2007