Sterling House of Rock Hill

I am a friend or relative of a resident

My mother-in-law was a patient at this facility. She had the onset of Alzheimers and this made it very difficult to care for her at home. This facility was a locked facility. No one in or out without permission or being accompanied by someone. The nursing staff, at best, was adequate. They provided the basic of care. I don't feel that they went out of their way to take care of the patient's needs. It was basically, here you go take this and move on. The cleaning staff seemed to do a good job. Rooms were cleaned very nicely and trash was collected regularly from the apartments, as they were called. Inside security was in question as male and female alzheimer patients were in the same area. Men just walked in to my mother-in-laws room while we were there. This was not acceptable. The food provided was healthy. Meals were served 3 times a time and they could ask for food or snacks at other times. The problem here was if they did not show up for a meal, they were not always followed up on. She could miss several meals. Family was to be notified of all appointments and extra care given or needed. This did not always happen. I know the facility was for assisted living and not total care, but I think this facility fell short of its duties.

Due to the high costs of mom's previous facility where she was in an Alzheimer's unit, we had to reduce monthly expenses. Also, we felt that most of the patients where she was were mentally more impaired than she was and I wanted her to have more meaningful interaction with residents. So, I put her in Sterlinghouse, which is a for profit continuing care facility that does not have various units and does accept Medicare benefits. All of the levels of care are together and as a patients' conditions worsen, they simply change the list of services that a patient receives. This seems to work well as far as individual one on one patient care goes, however since there is not a concentration of memory patients, there is a dearth of activities for patients of mom's specific condition of dementia. All in all I found mom's care at Sterlinghouse satisfactory, however Sterlinghouse did not identify mom's dehydration. The single limitation of Sterlinghouse's level of care is that they do not accommodate patients needing IVs or feeding tubes.