I can't say I recommend this place unless you or your loved one is nearing the end of life: then people bend over backwards to get family information and the patient the care he or she needs.
Once the patient is stablized, forget it: You can't get any information without an act of Congress. No one knows when the attending dr. will show up and you can't get any information from anyone else.
Things worsen when the patient is released to fourth floor rehab. My loved one's behind was red and painful throughout the stay. The tube of ointment that was virtually empty on Monday had not been replaced by Wednesday. I was there for three of my loved one's lunches: Even though my loved one ate only about 10 spoonfuls of soup (not the turkey sandwich, salad or dessert), it was recorded that she ate 50 percent of her meal.
Her short term therapy was a joke: Each PT and OT session was supposed to last an hour and a half. Each time I was there, my loved one got less than an hour (and shared the time with someone else). It wasn't until she was getting ready for discharge that they even tested what she could do in terms of self care (dressing, toileting, bathing etc.)
When we had the "family instructional meeting" to prepare for discharge, we were not really given options. It wasn't until the last 10 minutes when I was finally able to ask about sending my loved one to a skilled nursing center that we were even given that option ("we prefer to send them to their home" we were told. As my sister, a health-care manager with several years of hospital experience said, "They just want to make their numbers look good.")
My sister, who visited the patient every evening and every weekend day, both on the general and the rehab floor, NEVER ONCE, saw a nurse in the patient's room (during a (so-far) 18-day visit.
One evening she was visited by my sister, a respiratory therapist. My mother was blue in the face. Thank heavens my sister was able to revive her. After she alerted the staff, the hospital's respiratory therapist came in and gave her a treatment.
The next day, I went to visit her and asked the nurse what would be done with my mother regarding the episode the previous night. "What happened last night?" she asked. The only notation in the chart was that the respiratory therapist came in and gave her a treatment -- it didn't say that it was because this patient had stopped breathing. It wasn't until I consulted the nurse manager that the nurse's report on the incident was found "in another system". I'm glad there was some documentation, but what good is it if subsequent shifts didn't know that one of their patients had stopped breathing and thus would not know to keep extra tabs on her? If I were a nurse, I sure would like to know that.
Back in the day, we called Bi-County Hospital "Bi-Comedy". It's not funny at all to say that things don't seem to have improved. read more
