Oakland Care Center

dismayed

I wish zero stars had been an option..... RUN, do not walk, away from this facility. My mother-in-law needed rehabilitation after her surgery, and though this place looked shabby, we could find no other beds available locally. The "care" was shoddy at best, dangerous at worst. Prescribed medications were not administered, while tranquilizers which had not been prescribed obviously were. The doctor who attended her seemed incompetent and appeared to be suffering from dementia himself, as he was unable to understand anything we said or make himself understood. He looked and dressed like one of the more unfortunate residents, which we mistook him for when he wandered uncertainly into the room. In fact, he was so elderly and frail that at one point while standing with us, he began falling over into my wife, and she had to catch him and help him to his feet. If this sounds unbelievable, it was to us also. We had to take over much of her care. She was supposed to be receiving assistance with walking; there is a room with exercise and rehab equipment, but we never saw anyone using it, though we were there every day for over 2 months. My mother-in-law was in a wheelchair against her doctor's orders every time we arrived, and we had to help her get some walking practice. They lost many items of her clothing, though we had written her name in them; she never appeared in her own clothes after the first week. She presented with unexplained bruises, smelled and looked horrible, never was clean or had brushed teeth unless we did it during visits. My wife began to visit at different times during the day, and often found her asleep in bed with the blinds drawn. We often came just after dinner to find a full plate of uneaten food, with no one monitoring the fact that she hadn't eaten anything, and then someone would come for the tray. This may not have been such a bad thing, as I cannot describe how much like dog food some of the more unrecognizable food was. The worst part was that, out of concern for her welfare, we still had to be friendly with the uncompassionate and rude staff, especially one of the managers, Anna, who repeatedly assured us that my mother-in-law's stay was completely covered and that she would let us know the minute insurance coverage ran out, yet presented us with a large bill the day we went to pick my mother-in-law up, believing everything to have been covered. In what was supposed to be a restful place to recover, my mother-in-law's dementia and ability to walk worsened considerably, probably from inactivity. I would not let my dog stay in this place.