My father has been at Hawthorne twice for short-term rehab and twice for outpatient physical…read moretherapy. There's a reason we've gone back: Their skilled nursing section for short-term rehab is on par with other local centers PLUS their physical therapists and equipment are top-notch.
If you read a bunch of reviews, please consider that skilled nursing is a type of facility that will AUTOMATICALLY get bad reviews. No one wants to be there, right? It's not an Airbnb.
There are clients with widely varying needs, some more urgent. Everyone seems to want everything as if they are the only patient, but staff can only handle one patient at a time...no matter what facility. Take a look. No facility gets many 5 stars with no 1 or 2 stars.
Understand short-term rehab is in many regards what you make of it. If you stubbornly refuse to get out of bed, you're going to get bedsores. Yes, even at home. Particularly with the elderly who have fragile skin. There's something called "personal responsibility" that the client and their family need to employ. Short-term rehab is not a place to dump your loved one and ignore them. I didn't. My mom didn't. We were there daily and made sure things were good. Overall, they were.
As such we were on a friendly and first name basis with Tim, Leo, Lindsey, Barbara and Jackie, etc. They were always responsive to our needs and answered our questions. Organized. Smart. Hard-working. Communicated perfectly.
Your loved one is there because you cannot do at home what they can at a skilled-nursing short-term rehab. They have people who can lift your heavy loved one out of bed, get them showered and dressed, take their meds, and get them to their PT sessions. Plus, they have to deal with all kinds of personality issues of grumpy old people in pain who are thankless, miserable folk. 24/7. They're in pain and don't want to be there. Forgivable.
For people with kindness and gratitude, Hawthorne was wonderful. At least they were to us.
True, the food is average institutional food designed to meet many needs. Sometimes we brought him Chick-fil-A or McDonalds because he wanted it instead. That's okay. Not against any rules.
It is not perfect, call buttons need to be faster, but realism says that if the call response was faster, there are people who abuse it, calling every 5 seconds. A few more staff would be nice, but realistically speaking, vetting staff for a thankless job is a complicated process.
It was clean and had activities and a beautiful courtyard where we sat and enjoyed picnic lunches with my dad. My grandkids even came to have lunch there.
All this to say, believe the other reviews or believe me. Or both. Short-term rehab is largely what you make of it.