This facility has a 5-star rating from Medicare, so it would seem like quite a good place. However, nearly all of that rating is based on self-reporting and temporary fixes (like temporarily having adequate staff on hand), rather than on actual inspections, so that rating means just about nothing. This place certainly did not live up to its rating in any way, except for perhaps CNA staffing.
My husband was a patient here for two week -- until we could get him moved somewhere else -- for PT after a hip replacement following a bicycle accident. He had serious other orthopedic problems in his other leg, as well. Otherwise, he was a strong and independant man in his early 50's.
Let me say first the good things. Almost every one of the CNA's and nurses were excellent -- professional and helpful and very nice. And they worked really hard. The facility allows pets to visit, so it was nice and homey in that respect.
The double-occupancy room he was put in was formerly a private-patient room, and so the crowding of furniture was incredible, absurd, and unsafe. His bed was by the door, and in order to get his roommate out while in his bed to go to bath, etc., my husband's bed had to be moved out. The bathroom was full of wheelchairs and equipment, so it was impossible to get to the toilet to empty a urinal or to the sink then toilet to rinse it out. (The CNA's would empty a urinal into a plastic bag, tie it off for disposal, and hand the urinal back, unrinsed even. Had my husband stayed there long enough that he could get up and go to use the bathroom or to wash his hands and face at the sink, he would not have been able to. Because the room was designed for single occupancy, there weren't many outlets. When I asked where I could plug in something, I was told I could bring my own extension cord -- which I saw in the various rooms, most people did.
The outdoor area for the patients -- where they could chat or smoke -- was at the bottom of a ramp from the first floor of the building. The door to that ramp had no handicap button to push to open it, so people in wheelchairs or using walkers or canes had to push the heavy thing open to get out and pull hard on it to get it to open to go back in.
Whoever transcribed his medications from the doctor's orders to his medication sheets missed a medication for gout, so for several days he didn't get it. And he had a severe gout flare that kept him in bed for three or four days -- during which he could have no PT.
PT was scary. One of the first times he went for therapy, less than a week after his hip replacement surgery, the worker -- not sure if he was certified -- took him outside to walk around the outside of the building, well over a block distance. He had a pickup walker and wore a gait belt, the PT had no wheel chair in case my hubby could not make it - which he only barely could. He had to spend the next day in bed with extra doses of pain meds, just to get the pain under control before he could get any more PT done. The people in the PT department were not too ambitious. While I was there a few times with my husband, during his treatment, there would be four or five workers, only one or two working, and the others watching TV.
Between the omitted medication and the PT walk around the block my husband could not do PT for 5 of the 11 days it would have been available to him.
The dietary department evidently had no registered dietician or caring meal service manager. My husband was on a special diet with food textures and portion-size limits, following an abdominal surgery he'd had a couple of months earlier. I brought printed information from the hospital where he'd had it done -- illustrations and which foods to avoid, which foods were okay -- and went through them completely with the head of dietary, and it was all completely ignored. They brought whatever was on the general menu. I had to pack and bring to him acceptable meals and snacks.
There was a night worker who came in several times to get lab samples from or give meds to his roommate. She would come in and snap on the room's overhead light, which was on my husband's side of the privacy curtain. He asked her not to do that, but she did it repeatedly.
Being at and involved with that facility was an extremely unpleasant experince for us both. We tell everyone to stay away.
by Marcie
xxx.xxx.228.61
March 26, 2015
