Complete Care at Silver Lake

Velma

My mom stayed in Complete Care at Silver Lake for rehab in the past. They had a very large place for activities. Theirs was the largest, as far as activity place is concerned, that I've seen so far. The only problem is that it was all the way up to the front of the building. They had different wings for patients and my mother was the furthest away so she wasn't able to wheel herself down there. They had a nice area for the patients to go in for small activities. There was a place where they would be able to go into a room with a TV, and a piano. They also had a nice area for them to go outside and be able to sit and talk. A lot of them go outside to do that, just sit out and be outdoors where you could hear the birds. In the other facilities, the patients can also go outside but in this one, the patients could just take themselves outside without you worrying about them wandering off. They had a couple of entrances that the patients could go out but they wouldn't be able to wander off to the public area. I'm not going to say that the staff is bad but I've seen more attentiveness from the staff in the other facilities we've been to. For example, when they come in and do something that involves paper being removed, they wouldn't throw it in the trash. They would leave it on the bed or the floor. It also took a long time to get someone when it came to doing something for my mother. The patient's rooms were also very small. They have one toilet for four people and we did not like that. Little things like that made us want to move her to another place. One concern that we had with them was that they charged us for the room but did not disclose to us that her medication was going to cost separately so we ended up getting a $5,000 bill. I did not like that at all because it wouldn't cost us anything if we got her medication out of Dover Air Force Base as my mom is a veteran. We would have never agreed to a $900 medication bill and would just pull her out of that facility. We were also told that if we took her out of the facility, there probably wouldn't be a bed there for her to come back to. They said it would be better for her to stay there because normally that would get her approved for an extension. That is not what took place, though. The rehab section put one thing in the report and told us something different. The facility told us our mother still needed more rehab, which we kind of knew because she wasn't walking on her own or getting up on her own. We kept her there for about 9 days and ended up racking up a bill because, at the very end, she ended up not being approved for an extension even with us doing an appeal. It all came down because of the report that the rehab section put in. She was on Medicare Advantage and they never disclosed to us the report that was given to Medicare. That's why she ended up being released from there. I am very disappointed with that. I would say that when it comes to the fairness of the billing unless you know the proper questions to ask, they would get you, and I don't like using the word screwed over, but that's what it came down to. You would be charged more than what you would be expecting. We ended up being charged for the time that she was waiting to be given an extension. We're being led to believe that it's not going to be a problem for her to be extended that entire time and it came down to her being denied the extension.

Helen

My mother is in Silver Lake Center for long-term care. The staff seems very knowledgeable and very personable. It's an older building, and I think she said it was about 30 years old. It looked OK for a building being that age. I wish she had a bigger room, but she doesn't from what I could see from the windows, because we're not allowed to go in the bedroom. I went there Mother's Day and they allowed us to come in. They gave us a certain time to be there. Her room is like a hospital setup, and it reminded me of a dorm room. There's a person in there with her. My mother is not happy about being there. She wants to be home. She's 95 years old and she's used to being on her own, and that's confining to her. I could tell when we were there that they're being very patient with her. What they're trying to do is let her get used to the place, and them get used to her, so they can both be on the same level, and I appreciate that. We went into the function room, but it was set up like a little dining area. It can sit about 15 people, but they only allow one family in there at a time. They will bring the patients to you. They will wheel them out in a wheelchair or whatever they need to do because the rooms are really too small for everybody to be there, and with COVID, they still want you to be there at six feet apart. We should make the appointment 48 hours ahead of time so that they can get the patient ready, the nurse, and whoever gets the patient ready for you, especially like my mom, if they have to have assistants, which is fair. It looks pretty good for an older building. The landscaping and things are good. I can't say anything negative about it. I think the most negative part is my mother, and they have nothing to do with that. It's covered under her Medicare. Right now, she's paying $189 out-of-pocket to match Medicare. For the service that they're giving, in all fairness, that's a fair price because she's getting meals and service.