Covenant Hospice, Inc. - Inpatient & Palliative Care Cntr @ W. Florida Hospital

Hospice is supposed to help a loved one pass with dignity and help comfort the family. They talk about compassion and being a light in the dark (they are far from it). I had to watch my mom suffer and beg for help. In my mother's last days on earth she did not get the care she needed or deserved. I have seen more mercy at the animal shelter! You get one chance amd I wouldn't let them habe the opportunity. I STRONGLY advise you to choose another company!!!!! We have had a few people pass and hospice was involved and it was a great experience. PLEASE PLEASE give you and your loved ones peace and dignity and choose another company!

Covenant says in their guiding principles that they "will not hasten death." This is not true. They hasten death by negligence in their West Florida wing. Our family member was "hustled" by Covenant Hospice so many times at Baptist Hospital that we had to ask them to stop pressuring him to sign up for Hospice. He was not ready to go there, but they kept coming around and talking with him about it. Finally he gave in when his Oncologist (who had given up on him and started pushing Hospice six months ago) came in and encouraged him and told him he would receive wonderful care, and could continue to have the blood transfusions and other IV treatment that would support comfort. The care and comfort that was promised was not given. Not a single nurse came in and checked his blood sugar (which we were told would be checked twice a day) all day, and no one checked to see if he needed personal hygiene care as he could not walk nor take care of his own needs. We had requested an air mattress for him before he was transferred from Baptist Hospital to the West Florida Hospital Hospice floor. The nurse at Baptist told us she had sent in the request. The nurse at the Hospice floor said they didn't know anything about it, and made no effort to get him one. Yet he had bed sores that they never even looked at in the Hospice center. And they had him lying on a hard pad with some sort of pressure alarm connected that was supposed to go off supposedly if he fell out of the bed. Twice my family and I moved him at his request and the alarm went off. We discovered the alarm was under the bed on the floor, and no one could even hear it outside his room. And no one came when it went off either time. He passed away within 9 hours of being transferred to the West Florida Hospice wing. We had just been told by the main nurse that early afternoon when we asked her how long she felt he had left and she she estimated a week. He didn't even last a day at that center. Additionally, he was given a medication soon after he arrived that caused him to become incoherent and unable to talk. He was talking fine all morning and before that medication. We had asked prior to this that he not be given anything at all that would knock him out, and were promised he wouldn't. But this medication made him so groggy, incoherent and agitated, it was miserable for him. When he feel asleep around 6:30 PM, he never woke up, and died around 9:00 PM. His father and son were coming in the next morning to see him. They never got to see him alive again. Covenant Hospice was negligent and did not give him care or comfort.