It has taken me 6 months to write a fair review for them. I think after death, family members have a tendency to blame someone or be angry, so I wanted to take some time. I can say that I am writing this with with no anger; however, a warning needs to be put out for future patients.
To make a very long and difficult story short as possible . . . my father passed away under the care of Passages from a terminal illness. He was in significant amount of pain at the end stages of his life. He was receiving home care and the passages medical team (all nursing staff with one on-call doctor) were not able to properly manage my father's excruciating pain. At the time, we did not know if it was due to the medical incapacity of the staff or if my father's pain was just untreatable and difficult to manage.
When my family introduced taking my father to a hospital (ER based) due to his pain, his primary nurse misinformed us. She stated he would have to go through "so many things like taking blood" and other life saving measures (i.e. ivy fluid) and he would be subjected to unnecessary procedures that he would not be able to tolerate. The nurse also inserted that if we take him to a hospital then Passages care would have to be terminated. After their nursing staff was unable to reach their on-call doctor for 2 days (their excuse was that it was due to a holiday weekend), we could not allow my father to endure another hour of pain.
My father was taken to the nearby hospital. The ER staff were informed of his hospice care and took him into a wing for similar patients. They honored our wishes to have limited life saving measures and was able to insert the minimal ivy fluids to push through his much needed dosage of pain medication. Even the hospital staff were horrified to know how little pain medication he was receiving from Passages Hospice, as the doctor at the hospital needed to push through 10 times the strength of his pain medication for my father to be comfortable. During the last 2 days of his life, he did not moan in pain as his pain was being appropriately managed at the hospital.
This was the clear indicator that showed my family that Passages Hospice did not follow through on their mission, which is to help the patient through the end stages of life with minimal pain and comfort. If you are looking for Hospice care, I recommend that you go with a Non-Profit service. We did not know that Passages was a For Profit company and assumed every hospice company is a Non-profit.
This company is just not competent to take patients who are in significant amount of pain. They only have one doctor (on-call) and no back-up to their on-call doctor. The nursing staff did the best to their ability but they need more training. Perhaps they are discouraged from "losing" their patients to a hospital, which means less profit for them.
All they needed to do was to be honest and tell us that they could not manage my father's condition and pain any longer. We would have taken him to the hospital earlier, so he did not have to endure so many days of pain and agony. I am only sorry that I picked Passages for my father's care. They have left our family with much feelings of regret and guilt.
DO NOT GO TO PASSAGES FOR HOSPICE CARE OR YOU MAY EXPERIENCE THE SIMILAR . . . PAIN AND SUFFERING FOR YOUR LOVED ONE. read more