Hillcrest Raleigh at Crabtree Valley

The social worker at the hospital helped me find Hillcrest Raleigh at Crabtree Valley. My husband was at this facility. It was very good. He entered under rehab and was moved to skilled care. I was never in his room. Because of COVID restrictions they did not allow visitors inside. I don't know about the food, but the dietitian stayed connected with me. She kept me abreast of his menu and such. The facade was good. They took very good care of my husband. Also I have a neighbor whose husband was also there and she was very happy with it. With the COVID restrictions, they had set up a system for window visits. You could schedule window visits where they had a canopy, a bench, and an intercom so that you could speak with the person inside. They had a cooler there with water bottles for the visitors; they were very accommodating in that respect.

On the positive side, the nurses and therapists are for the most part capable and caring. This is probably the most important factor in choosing a facility and makes Hillcrest a potential destination. There are many negatives however. First, the doors to the rooms and more importantly the bathrooms are heavy and close on you making it nearly impossible for a patient such as myself to manipulate them before peeing in my pants and all over the floor. Try using the call bell and HOPE someone shows up within a minute or two, unlikely although you can clearly hear employees laughing and talking right outside your door. You'll need to share a room and hope for the best regarding a roommate. Although the website claims their chef is something resembling a world-class gourmet, the meals are barely adequate and rarely hot by the time they are delivered to you. Finally, there is a doctor on staff but in the two weeks I've been here, I did not get to see him even once.

I thought Hillcrest Raleigh (Crabtree Valley) was very good. I would use it for rehab if I had to go there. The staff was very good, efficient, and pleasant. They were very nice, and I had no problems. The rooms were sparse -- certainly not elegant. I didn’t go into the dining room, but I saw it through the windows. It looked like everybody was enjoying it, and certainly their menu was very nice.

Hillcrest Raleigh was great. My dad loved the food and the cheery atmosphere felt alot more like home. Friends came by frequently because it was such a comfortable place. The director was awesome and approachable. The nursing staff was caring and attentive. In fact they came within a minute if the nursing button was pushed. That is not the case at other facilities we have stayed in. I highly recommend them and hope they have a room available if we need rehab again!

Hillcrest Raleigh was fair. We went to visit my mother every day for about seven weeks. Some staff members were better than others. What I came to notice was the staff would be sitting around the nursing station and patients' call bells would be going off non-stop, but nobody would get up to answer them. The food and living quarters were fair. It was certainly not elegant, but for the cost, it was OK. It appeared to be clean. They were in the process of remodeling the lobby, the hallways, and things to be a lot nicer, but the individual patients' rooms were not to be desired nor very modern. You would be unable to raise the bed up and down. My mom was a fall risk and the reason she was there was because she had fallen at home. She had a head injury and had to have brain surgery. She was very unsteady on her feet. However, I would say the PT was very good, but I was very concerned that the bed could not be lowered. What they did for my mom was that they put mats on the floor, but then it made it a slipping hazard. They put mats around her bed because they were concerned that if she would try to get out of bed she might fall, but the problem was it was more of a risk with the mats there. The first day she was there, I called the nursing supervisor and I said: “Listen, you need to know that my mom is going to try to get out of that bed and go to the bathroom on her own. So, you need to take precautions.” They did not have a fall risk sign on her or anything. My mom had dementia and did not know how to use the call bell. There were some very caring nursing assistants that did a very good job, but they also had a lot of staff that seemed to be lazy and did not do their jobs because of how the call bells were constantly ringing while they just sat around and talked.

My wife was in Hillcrest of Raleigh for three months. I have very mixed feelings about it. It depends on the individual staff members. I had a couple of staff members who were excellent, but in general, for example, it was impossible to get a warm meal delivered to her room. She couldn’t go to the dining facility, and it was impossible to get a warm meal delivered. She was incontinent and it would take sometimes two or three hours after she rung for them to come and help her. The management was pretty good. It was individual departments and staff members who I had a real problem with. The rooms were nice and clean. They were rebuilding the entire interior of the facility and had to be commended for putting in that kind of investment. Management appears to be dedicated to their mission but that dedication doesn’t spread down the line, at least not consistently. They were decent and weren’t large, but that’s not their fault since they bought an existing facility. It was well maintained and attractive. The food was decent, but the portions were abysmally small.

My aunt has been a resident in the long term nursing care for about a year now. Each time I visit I get more upset and frustrated with this HOLE. Today I brought my elderly Mother to visit only to find her face down in her lunch, dirty and so wet that it had gone through her clothes. I had difficulty even finding a nurse and then they could not give me a wash cloth to try to clean her up. We ask about her hearing aid and were told that her husband, who died just this past week, had them? She has no other family and unfortunately I live out of town so cannot be responsible for checking on her other than every few months. If there could be a worse place, I haven't seen it yet.

Mom is at Blue Ridge Health Care Center, and it is a nice facility. The people are nice. The outside is beautiful, really clean, and well kept. The rooms are shared rooms, but everyone has their own space, and that is good.