Our Mom stayed here for 6 weeks from mid November til the end of the year, 2014. This review is…read moreintended to inform folks considering this place, which is actually a few different homes in same area under same management. Meina Wu, the RN who runs these homes, has a domineering stubborn streak which makes communication difficult, and readily admitted that they "do not give medication" - which in her own unique way says that they cannot handle elders who have a very detailed medication list or have significant care needs. Yet she DOES care about her residents and can handle those with simple needs such as feeding, cleaning, peace of mind, and simple medication.
Unfortunately I cannot recommend RN3LovingCareHomes. 921 Elm was the location that our Mom stayed in, among 3 board and care houses in a row where workers shifted from one to the next.
The good: the CNA's , caregivers, and helpers are all well intended, caring, sincere, and very hard working people, so again: if your Mom or Grandpa does not need much medication or medical help of any importance, this could be a great place to take them.
The bad: if your loved one is in need of important, detailed medicine or has care needs that might include bandaging wounds, physical therapy, intensive care, or simply night care that involves changing a diaper, taking to the bathroom often, or has falling issues, etc, then this is NOT the place to take them.
We had to constantly monitor these people: it took numerous visits by Kaiser Home Health Care nurses and PT's just to scratch the surface. They had to train the workers in many basic medical practices such as dressing and bandaging wounds and giving medication properly. In fact I personally had to instruct each caregiver how to dispense my Mom's meds and I do not work in the medical field in any way. The understanding of the English language is so poor here, most of them could not even understand the medication list even when it was clearly revised twice by the HHC nurses !
On so many occasions, I caught them about the give the wrong dose because they could not simply understand adding a 10 mg pill to a 2.5 mg pill to make a total dose of 12.5 ! Again there were major road blocks because of language comprehension.
Also of concern is they give medicine by hand, often not washing hands between activities (!)
On the first night that we hired night care, Meina told this person to stand outside the room, and we reported this to the agency. Meina told us that her caregivers could sleep on the couch and "hear" if my Mom was having any problems and then take care of it. Beyond the idiocy of this idea, there is the simple fact that on most nights the in house caregiver sleeps way down the hall. If a resident needs help they are out of luck and up a creek without a paddle. The one caregiver provided needs to sleep at night to function the next day and only gets up a couple times to check in on residents.
In fact we ended up hiring a night sitter from a 24 hour care company to stay with my Mom. There is no way that an elderly resident with anything like Alzheimer's or recovering from a stroke with a fall-risk or maybe just has to use the bathroom or get changed often, can be safe and comfortable. This extra help costs were about $1000 per week, so that brought our bill for the month to about $10,000 when added to the board and care rent.
The upshot is that it is incredibly difficult to find ANY board and care facility that has the medical knowledge and staff to handle ANYONE with significant needs, and Meina's RN3 LovingCareHomes are not exception. Unless your loved on has very simply care needs such as being fed and cleaned, this place will not be safe. I give two stars for the things they do well for simple needs elders, and again they all were really wonderful people, but as described here-in, for our Mom that was by far not nearly enough.
