Please avoid Northern Manor at all costs. My wife went into a coma and was needed to have a lot of care, when she first arrived they were pleasant and easy to talk to. I was scared and had no idea of what to do, and for the most part was left on my own. I was not given information that would have helped with future decisions, medical records were not transferred to or from Northern Manor, to or from hospitals that were rendering care.
I was under a lot of stress and was unaware of what was needed to be done or how things would proceed. One piece of information I received from my wife's first social worker briefly mentioned "Spousal Refusal" to help with long term care, I believed my insurance would be sufficient to care for her needs. My wife got sick after a couple days and needed to be transferred back to the hospital and stayed there for a couple of weeks while they were waiting for medical records to be transferred from the previous hospital or Northern Manor. When my wife stabilized, after I had to hand carry her medical records to the hospital as neither the previous hospital nor Northern Manor were able or willing to send them to the current hospital rendering care, they processed her as a new arrival and that caused a new billing from my insurance and thus a new copay.
After a time, I received a call from Northern Manor that my insurance company was requesting a "Peer Review", which I was later was informed required a medical professional from Northern Manor to contact a medical professional from my insurance company to verify that care was still required. Northern Manor made multiple attempts to have me contact the insurance company who, after I informed them she was in a coma and required assistance I was not able to provide as she had a feeding tube and a tracheostomy, said everything was done on my end and Northern Manor should reach out to them if they have any questions, which Northern Manor blatantly refused to do. I also briefly inquired on the process they had brought up when she first arrived, as I couldn't recall the name of the "Spousal Refusal" at the time. They told me they had no information on anything that could help me with this. The person I was talking to from Northern Manor was either fired or had quit, and when I discussed what was going on with her replacement, she was able to help me get started on the Spousal Refusal application.
My wife had a few issues here and there, however I received very little information on a few times when she had an infection and required to be sent to the hospital, at one point the hospital had called me to let me know she was there, even though Northern Manor had transferred her neglecting to inform me. After almost a year of her being in a nearly to non-responsive state my wife took her last breath, they informed me about this, I immediately started calling family to let them know. My wife's mother and father started up from Delaware as soon as they could as this was not directly expected.
I arrived at Northern Manor as soon as I was able to as I am an hour away myself.
After visiting her to say goodbye, I informed Northern Manor that my wife's parents were on there way to see her, I made arrangements with the funeral home to pick her up after they had a chance to say their goodbyes, the nurses at Northern Manor and the funeral home had talked on the phone and agreed that this would be possible. I returned home to rest so that I would be able to help my in-laws with their arrangements when they arrived. I received a phone call from Northern Manor insisting I have the funeral home pick her up immediately and she continually iterated that they do not contact them despite what they had told me previously. I told them I would call the funeral home and arrange for pick up. The same lady from Northern Manor called me three additional times while I was on the phone with the funeral home. When I had arranged for immediate pickup I called Northern Manor back and let the lady know how unprofessional it is the way she is behaving while I was calling the funeral home as she had requested while I was in mourning. I gave her the contact information again for the funeral home and I guess she also had gotten rude with their representative. Luckily my in-laws arrived just before the funeral home was able to pick up her remains, which they were rushed through their visit.
Please, if you have any options, do not use Northern Manor for long term care. There are some truly caring professionals that work there, but from what I can see they have horrid policies and people that are in charge of care at Northern Manor are definitely not compassionate nor professional. read more