top
East Bay
East Bay
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Are skilled nursing facilities serving their patients well in Oakland, and California?

by Lynda Carson (tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com)
Sometimes a skilled nursing facility (SNF) may be run by a for-profit corporation, and others may be run by a so-called nonprofit corporation. At some facilities in Oakland, if you did not have insurance it may cost as much as $271.00 or more a night just to sleep in a single room with 2 other room mates, and that does not include any services that will cost extra!

Are skilled nursing facilities serving their patients well in Oakland, and California?

By Lynda Carson - July 31, 2016

Oakland - Oakland has a variety of options when it comes to so-called skilled nursing facilities (SNF) for patients being released from hospitals, if they are not well enough to be released to their homes for various medical reasons.

Sometimes a skilled nursing facility (SNF) may be run by a for-profit corporation, and others may be run by a so-called nonprofit corporation. At some facilities in Oakland, if you did not have insurance it may cost as much as $271.00 or more a night just to sleep in a single room with 2 other room mates, and that does not include any services that will cost extra.

Some of the choices for the so-called skilled nursing facilities that are available in Oakland according to Skilled Nursing Facilities.org, may include Bay Area Healthcare Center, Bellaken Skilled Nursing Center, Excell Healthcare Center, Fruitvale Healthcare Center, Oakgrove Springs Care Center, Oakhill Springs Care Center, Oakland Healthcare & Wellness Center, Park Merritt Care Center, Willow Tree Nursing Center, Windsor Healthcare Center of Oakland, and others.

Windsor Healthcare Center of Oakland, is listed as having a one star rating, with 94 beds for patients. According to California Advocates For Nursing Home Reform, “On July 8, 2016, the California Department of Public Health (DPH) denied applications submitted by Shlomo Rechnitz that sought licenses to operate five nursing facilities. Mr. Rechnitz – who has been identified as California’s largest nursing home operator – was acquiring the nursing homes from Windsor, another nursing home chain headquartered in California. The applications had been pending since February 2015.”

Additionally, according to California Advocates For Nursing Home Reform, the five nursing homes involved in these denials by the California Department of Public Health (DPH) are:
Windsor Healthcare Center of Oakland, located at 2919 Fruitvale Avenue in Oakland, which was to be operated as the Brookdale Healthcare & Wellness Centre, LP;

Windsor Chico Care Center, located at 188 Cohasset Road in Chico, which was to be operated as the Chico Terrace Healthcare & Wellness Centre, LP;

Windsor Chico Creek Care and Rehabilitation Center, located at 587 Rio Lindo Avenue in Chico, which was to be operated as the Chico Heights Rehabilitation & Wellness Centre, LP;

Windsor Redding Care Center, located at 2490 Court Street in Redding, which was to be operated as the River Valley Healthcare & Wellness Centre, LP; and

Windsor Gardens Convalescent Center of Anaheim, located at 3415 W. Ball Road in Anaheim, which was to be operated as The Abbey Pavilion Healthcare Center of Anaheim.


Good or bad, according to sources there appears to be a lot of information available that causes people to ask if the so-called skilled nursing facilities/nursing homes are serving their patients well. At times people even wonder if some patients have become trapped at these so-called “skilled nursing facilities” (SNFs) after hospitals or family members transfer patients to a facility after they have surgery in a local hospital, or because of an illness that may include cancer or some other disease, or due to injuries from accidents, or some form of disability that may affect some patients.

According to Skilled Nursing Facilities.org, a skilled nursing facility (SNF) is much like a nursing home, but a real skilled nursing facility may offer more “skilled” medical expertise and services than a nursing home, for the sick, elderly, injured, or disabled.

Additionally, according to Skilled Nursing Facilities.org, “In terms of rehabilitation in skilled nursing facilities, hospitals make the arrangements for follow-up patient care after an acute hospital stay, like after a surgery. When released from the hospital, a patient transfers to the skilled nursing home to receive hands-on care from nurses. If a patient needs rehabilitation like physical of speech therapy, a patient receives the services until they're able to go home.”

Despite the above statement and claims, in their own words according to Skilled Nursing Facilities.org, “Over the years, skilled nursing facilities gained a bad reputation.”

A bad reputation? According to sources, there appears to be plenty of information and horror stories floating around about some of the so-called skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in Oakland that have allegedly placed the wrong patients on Para Transit buses at times. As a result, some patients never made their appointments at times, because the wrong patient was delivered to a location by mistake.

If you, or any of your friends or loved ones have any plans to stay at a SNF, you may want to think twice before bringing any of your good clothes to the facility. Patients have long complained that their clothes are often lost and not returned to them when they have their clothes washed by the laundry at the SNF they have been transferred to. According to an industry insider who works at a SNF in Oakland, she states that this is a major problem at most SNFs, and that the facilities have not been able to figure out why so many clothes that belong to the patients end up becoming lost, after they have been sent to the facility laundry for cleaning. Patients also claim that other patients come into their rooms, and rip off their clothes at times, especially if they are in a facility that does not have a lock on their closet.

Patients freely wander around the halls of a SNF, and sometimes they may enter someone else’s room to sit in a chair, or to lay down in someone else’s bed. At times patients may discover that they have had some of their belongings ripped off from their closet, while they were away from their rooms. Other times patients complain that nurses or staff are always searching the small little dressers next to their beds in a SKF, as a way to make sure the patients do not have something the nurses do not want them to have including sharp objects, cookies, and different types of food, or condiments.

Allegedly, the food in some SNFs are so bad, and inedible at times to the patients, that some people go hungry and refuse to eat the food. Or some patients may prefer an alternative to the meal being offered, and prefer to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich rather than a meal they cannot eat because it tastes so disgusting, or horrible. At times patients may be transferred back to the hospital, after going through long periods of refusing to eat their food because it tasted so bad to them, or because they were so sick that they were not able to eat enough food to sustain themselves properly.

Sometimes patients in wheelchairs can be seen hanging onto the handles of the large metal food carts on wheels that are being pulled through the hallways of a SNF for a free ride. This free ride may occur while the staff are pulling the huge metal carts filled with many trays of food from the kitchen area through the halls, and to the patients in their rooms.

Homeless Persons In Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs)

Some SNFs have patients released from hospitals that are homeless, and they need a place to live. Sometimes a patient may have lost their housing and became homeless after a long stay in a SNF. They may have become homeless with no where to go when they are discharged from the facility except to the cold hard streets of Oakland, or perhaps to a local homeless shelter if there is any room available. Some discharged patients from a SNF may go back to sleeping under the bushes at night, or squatting in some empty house or building in Oakland, or in some nearby city in Alameda County.

Patients Complain Of Abuse In SNFs

According to sources, allegedly some patients are being mistreated by the staff at some of the facilities in Oakland, or by those who may not want to change their diapers often enough. Patients allegedly have been mistreated by staff in these facilities for various reasons at times. Additionally, there may be times when the patients are allegedly abused because they may have been given the wrong medication by mistake.

On a daily basis, inside a SNF the shrill screeching sounds of loud alarms or buzzers can be heard going off day and night due to patients pressing the red button at their bedside when seeking assistance, or when an IV machine needs attention, or possibly when oxygen machines have malfunctioned at times and need attention, including situations at times when patients in wheelchairs are trying to leave or escape the facility by opening doors that are hooked up to alarms that alert the staff when the door is being opened.

At times, staff can often be seen running down the hallways of a SNF complex when the alarms go off as a result of the doors being opened by patients in wheelchairs who are trying to escape, or find a way out of the complex. Elderly, sick, injured, or disabled patients may be seen crying in the hallways of a SNF, as they are quickly being pushed back to their rooms in their wheelchairs by an angry staff person who may not want to tolerate any patients who fail to obey the rules of the facility.

At times the staff may get angry at patients who press the red button at their bedside too often when seeking assistance. At the same time, the staff at a SNF may tell the patients that if they really need something, that they need to keep asking for it over and over again, to get the attention they may deserve. The weak and quiet ones at a SNF, may not get the attention they really need as a result of such alleged practices.

Allegedly, often times the staff may have become used to ignoring the blinking lights that appear on a wall/board at the nurses station in a SNF when someone presses the red button in an emergency, or they may ignore the alarms that are going off when a patient presses the red button at their bedside when they need assistance. Sometimes a patient may want some cold ice water to quench their thirst, while lying in their beds for long periods of time.

Some patients also complain of being abused in a SNF after allegedly being left for many hours in bed, or in their wheelchairs, while wearing wet filthy diapers that should have been changed long ago by staff who may not want to change their diapers. Other times patients may complain about staff that are allegedly being very rough with them while changing their diapers, day and night.

Allegedly, other patients may be found at times in their beds that are covered by vomit or puke, because the staff may be ignoring them, or the staff may get angry at those who are sick and cannot help from vomiting on themselves, or in their beds. At times the staff may get tired of cleaning up a mess over and over again, and may leave the patients covered in vomit for hours while attending to other patients that are easier to deal with.

Then there are the patients in a SNF who may not be thinking clearly, that may rip off their diapers and crap all over themselves, all over the floor, or in their beds because they may be delirious or out-of-it, due to medication mishaps. Some patients may be having problems thinking clearly after many years of being dialysis patients according to sources, or they may have other problems affecting their mind due to an illness, or complications involving different types of medication. Allegedly, the staff at some of these facilities may have a bit of anger or resentment building up in them in time, after they have to clean up a diaper mess over and over again, that many of the sick patients create due to their illness, at any given moment.

When eating, sometimes the patients in a SNF may have to compete with the flies and gnats in their rooms when trying to eat their food, if they do not eat in a designated dining room at the facility.

There are times when patients may be sharing a room with one patient, or two other patients, and possibly more patients at some locations in Oakland.

At times, the patients may realize that they were transferred to a SNF that does not have a lock on the door to the bathroom in their rooms, and that anyone may walk in on them at any given moment. A SNF may be a very stressful environment for people trying to heal after having surgery, especially if they are elderly, sick, have been injured, or may be disabled.

The patients in a SNF may even find that they are walking on raw sewage at times in their bathroom, because the toilet may become clogged when flushed. Or the toilet may need a new “wax o-ring seal” placed under the toilet because the old “wax o-ring seal” is damaged, and leaking raw sewage when flushed. At times the situation may be be ignored by the staff in a SNF, because there may not be enough maintenance persons working at the facilities in Oakland.

In some cases, raw sewage may seep out from under the bottom of the toilet when being flushed, and the raw sewage may be seeping under the floor coverings or under the floor of the bathroom, in a patients room. This may cause the patients feet to get wet from raw sewage when they walk on the bathroom floor, because the raw sewage oozes up from under the floor coverings when they step onto the floor of the bathroom. As a result of the toilet problems, raw sewage may be tracked all over the SNF complex by patients, and the staff going into the bathrooms of the patients.

Mold and mildew, may also persist in the bathroom of some of the patient’s rooms at a SNF, while they are recovering from a surgery or illness, after being transferred there from one of local hospitals in the Bay Area.

In some SNFs, there may be people screaming and yelling all day and throughout the night, disturbing the other patients in the facility who are trying to go to sleep, or get some rest. It may be very difficult to get a good nights rest in a SNF, especially when the staff makes their rounds to wake up the patients to get their vitals, or when they to change their diapers of the patients.

There are even some patients in Oakland who have called 911 to escape a bad situation in a SNF at times, including a 50 year old woman whom I will call M. J., who recently felt so abused in a SNF, that she ended up calling 911 one evening to be transferred back to Highland Hospital.

M. J., believed that she would receive better treatment at Highland Hospital, and less abuse than she received in a SNF she was in. After dialing 911, she complained about the abuse she received from the staff at the SNF that she was located in, and told the operator that she wanted to be picked up by an ambulance to be transferred back to Highland Hospital.

After making some convincing arguments to some first responders from an Oakland Fire Department in recent weeks that appeared at the SNF when she called 911, including to the members of an ambulance, or the Para Medics involved that arrived that evening, M. J., was taken from the SNF back to Highland Hospital, where she wanted to go.

On another front which is of concern to many, according to the California Advocates For Nursing Home Reform, they are trying to stop SB 503, a bill which is known as a “Deadly Shift in Nursing Home Care.”

According to the advocates for nursing home reform, SB 503 is a bill that would permit nursing homes to chemically restrain and make end-of-life decisions for residents alleged to be incapacitated. Their web site has plenty of other information that may be of interest to those that may end up in a SNF, or a nursing home, including their family members, and their loved ones.


In addition to the alleged abuses and concerns mentioned above, there are plenty of news stories to be found on the web, including links to articles about some notorious SNFs that have made it into the news for one reason or another in California, or elsewhere.

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com, or newzland2 [at] gmail.com


>>>>>>
Add Your Comments
Listed below are the latest comments about this post.
These comments are submitted anonymously by website visitors.
TITLE
AUTHOR
DATE
Elaine
Mon, Aug 1, 2016 7:07AM
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$110.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network