Symphony wants docile patients. If your loved one is ultra-docile and you like them that way,…read moreyou'll do okay. Six months mine there eroded my hubby's poor self esteem and increased his anxiety.
My husband started out fairly docile. A nurse (who documented this in her nursing notes) came into his room at night while he was sleeping to clean between his toes! When this toe-cleaning woke him up, he only yelled at her to get the hell out of his room!
An Alzheimer's resident climbed into his bed with him and wouldn't get out of the bed. My husband only told him he had to leave!
Alzheimer's patients often wandered in and out of his room. His so-called "apartment" was never truly private. We had to teach aides to knock so they wouldn't come upon me lying on his bed with him (clothed) having hugs.
My husband - whose memory problems come from traumatic brain injuries, not Alzheimer's - started out so docile, staff was able to put dead hearing aids in his ears and he did not complain, although the devices blocked what hearing he does have. He would later pull them out. Workers kept putting the hearing aids back in without asking if the things worked. Staff was creating an adversarial relationship with an impaired person, making him feel like a sack of potatoes.
He acted out - screaming a lot when he had to wait for his (delicious) food. Then he began to fall a lot. Finally Southview Hospital admitted him for a UTI and sepsis. Did Symphony say, "We're sorry - this was bad behavior related to UTI." No.
Staff continued putting his dead hearing aids in and he kept ripping them out. As he got more frustrated, they asked me what they should. I said the obvious: "Ask him???" From the beginning I was told, "Our people have been trained to work with the dementia population. They won't have any trouble." (I later learned they sometimes hire workers off the street.)
The Patients Bill of Rights (a federal document), created so the individual won't feel bullied or violated, says a patient can refuse care. Workers are then supposed to go away and come back. With good care, an aide says, "May I pull this down? Is it okay for me to wipe you?" Hubby never knew if his caregiver would be a bully or someone who treated him like his knew his own name, so he just hated all of them - and felt hated. Then he stopped getting along with even the good ones.
One aide persisted and persisted in changing him. He protested. She "ignored" him (her words). He protested. She persisted. He hit her. She kept chatting with him and later told others she had no need for medical care.
But when the Director of Nursing learned she'd been "assaulted," Symphony brought in the police and filed a police report. They tried to stop me from learning the details of what had occurred, as if hubby had arbitrarily and spontaneously assaulted this aide. The police report, which I later got, showed, in her handwriting, this occurred after he made it clear he did not want care and she "ignored" his repeated protests.
During a care conference, I suggested the hearing aid issue may have contributed to what happened. The administrator roared, "His hearing aids had nothing to do with him 'punching' (the aide)!"
They put him on a psychotropic drug. He could barely see his own feet or string together a paragraph, but he wasn't yelling or screaming! I got him off the drug when I could. I want him human and real. I want him to be able to think.
When I asked the Director of Nursing to have aides speak to him more respectfully ("May I...") or to help him brush his teeth daily, I was informed that it's difficult to get aides to do something if you're not watching them. End of discussion.
Hubby was hauled off to the ER repeatedly for behaviors. Several Southview ER professionals said Symphony had a pattern of "dumping" dementia patients on the ER for dementia behaviors because they didn't know how to deal with dementia patients.
One day after I left my purse in hubby's room, a nurse brought me my wallet - keys and credit cards etc in it. An Alzheimer's resident was found with it. No one ever asked me if I wanted to file a police report.
Since Symphony is only an assisted living facility, it is not listed at the Medicare.gov website, where ratings are assigned to Medicare eligible facilities. There is no outside agency monitoring the treatment of this fragile population.
The website implies that they have religious services on Sundays. Symphony does not have any kind of religious services on Sundays.
About the bill: the law says I have a right to know what I'm paying for. I tried to get an answer about this after they jacked up my bill by $1,200 per month after hubby "assaulted" the aide. They sent me generic information that didn't answer my question. After repeated attempts at clarifying where my money had gone, I gave up. Symphony makes up rules on what they have to do.
