Care First Hospice

Judy

My mother availed the services of Care First Hospice. We've had them care for us for about three and a half months. We've got a lot of great care out of them and they tried to work with us. We were quite demanding at times and they did try to take care of what we needed. Well, my mother started on hospice because she had bad pain. So, hospice had to work with us a lot. We had to call them out to replace the catheters, because once we got her catheters, then we were able to give her some type of cocktail to keep her asleep at night. That was a major help to her and to us who were caring for her. You've got a lot of different issues going on with her, she had good days and bad days. They worked with us, and we've developed a relationship with a woman that was the shower lady. She would come three days a week and shower my mom. Then we had the nurse that comes twice a week. We got to know them, and it became a pretty good relationship. She had an appointment trying to find out what was going on with her leg, so we had to get revoked at the hospice to go to this appointment. Down the road, the hospice was trying to do different things trying to lower my mom's pain level, and it made my mom go out of her mind completely. We had to put her in the hospital, so then we got revoked off hospice. After that visit, we ended up putting her on the board and care. The hospice followed us there, but we changed the nurses and that was more difficult. That's when our problem started with them because this new nurse had no idea of where we have come from and how we got there. She started changing some things, which she shouldn't have changed and they started becoming more difficult. When my mom was pulling out the catheter, she couldn't show up for three or five days. That's not going to work. One time they didn't show up for a couple of days, and my mom was awake that whole time, wouldn't go to sleep at night, and fell out of bed. That's why we changed hospices. They said they were 24 hours. If at night, I called, I'm going to have to call an emergency. They couldn't get to me a lot of times until an hour and a half, or two hours. There are times when they can't get to you for five hours. So, if I need somebody in a hurry, I can't wait an hour and a half for people who are too far away from me. That was a real drawback. But I could call them every single day, and they would work with me. One nurse lived very close to my mom, 10 minutes away. But when it wasn't her day to work or she wasn't on call, then they had to send somebody out from out of the area. I don't know much about the billing because we didn't get the bill. We had no problems in this with them in that manner. If we needed something, they would get it and they were always the ones that arrange for transportation for my mother from the hospital to the board and care. I give them a lot of high marks for all their effort and their energy. Sometimes you just have a lot of high expectations, especially when it's your loved one. So, sometimes our demands could have been unrealistic.