Cypress Home Care Solutions, also known as Honor Home Care, has been a huge disappointment. Renee Rizzo, the care service coordinator, talked a good talk when she sold us on this at-home care company.
Because we all live out of state, we needed to find 24/7 at-home care for our 90-year old mother who lives in Arizona and has dementia. We already have two caretakers, but we needed a couple more for round-the-clock care. We were concerned that there would be a revolving door with a bunch of different caretakers, but when Renee did her "assessment," she assured us they would find a good match and our mother would have two or three caretakers at the most. She also touted the caretakers' experience working with people who have dementia. She said they would make sure our mother ate meals and they would do physical activity with her, take walks, play card games and do activities to help her brain. She said Cypress was more expensive than the other companies ($30 an hour versus $26 an hour), but that's because their caretakers were trained in Alzheimer's care.
Cypress has been sending caretakers to our mother's house now for one month. So far, she has had nine different caretakers from this company. She is becoming agitated because of the parade of strangers who are coming into her house. It's difficult enough keeping track of nine different people under normal circumstances, but for someone who has dementia, it is unsettling. One or two have been very good with her. But they disappear after one or two days. The caretakers who come more regularly are obviously not trained to work with people who have dementia. We have cut their visits back to only four hours a day, four days a week, but Cypress is still unable to find one qualified caretaker to fill the slot.
The poor care and the number of different caretakers in one month are the main issues. But the billing issues are troubling, too. We were told to purchase face masks and gloves for the caretakers to wear when they come to the house. We bought $80 worth of PPE and left it inside the house by the front door. Cypress charged us an extra $27 the first week and $30 the second week for PPE (even though we had already purchased it). There were other billing discrepancies, too, that are too complicated to get into. $57 may not sound like a lot of money to worry about, but when you're already paying thousands of dollars a month for in-home care, it seems a little excessive to have to pay for face masks and gloves that the caretakers are not even using because they bring their own personal face masks and don't wear gloves.
We use another agency for our mother's regular care (that doesn't charge for PPE). We love the caretaker who has been caring for our mom for almost two years, but she can't work all of the shifts herself. Yes, there are administrative problems with the other company, too, which is why we tried Cypress. But because Cypress is such a disappointment, we are going to be looking elsewhere. read more
