South Marin Health & Wellness Center

I was a patient at South Marin Health and Wellness for 19 days in September, and will be returning there by choice next week after surgery. I had never been a patient in a care facility and was not sure what I was in for, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. In short, I loved it there, because of the professional, kind and responsive staff at all levels. All my needs were safely taken care of. Because of Covid (which I don’t think they’ve ever had there), their social and recreational activities were limited, but I didn’t care. I could visit with friends and family through a screened window. I felt safe, accepted, well fed and taken care of. What more could I have needed?

The rehab center my mother was at was Kindred Care, and we were not pleased with them. The feel and look were good. They had great physical therapists, but the actual care was not good. The aides and nurses let my mother yell and scream at night without getting her any help. All they did was move her to a room further away from the other residents. They did not call in the doctor to see what was wrong. It turns out that she needed medication for her oncoming dementia. Also, they had her in the disposable diapers but did not change them on a regular basis, and she kept telling them she needed to go to the bathroom. It would be like four hours, so she got a terrible diaper rash and bed sores. The actual living conditions were poor. They should improve on their actual care of the patient.

Kindred was a local skilled nursing facility. Mom came out of the hospital and we immediately put her in there. She does a lot of physical therapy. She's getting stronger, so she's regaining her strength. The staff is outstanding, very professional, very courteous and did their job very well. The room is very nice. It's kind of almost like a hospital room.

The place was clean and quite. The staff was friendly and helpful the only draw back was that the rooms were small and they had at least 2 people to a room. We were looking for a facility that would have a privet room for her since patients with mental illnesses tend to be loud and not always clean hygiene. The facility seemed to have interesting activities for older people and the facility itself seemed to be well maintained. Many of the facilities that we visited including this one had many patients that really needed to be put in their own rooms due to their conditions i.e. dementia but for what ever reason (I suspect cost) they are put in to small rooms with 1 to 2 other patients. I personally feel this is bad practice but don't blame the facility's necessarily. Ultimately we decided that this facility would be a bad fit for our situation.