Northwestern Center

Caring112233350

My father was very unhappy, and I am very disappointed with Northwestern Healthcare. He doesn’t get the adequate care that he needs to. His daily regime that is ordered by the doctors isn’t followed. I have found him two days in a row in the same clothes. He is supposed to get eye care because he has had eye surgery and problems in the past which means warm compresses on his eyes once or twice a day and drops, and he has had problems which indicate they haven't done that. I warned them that he was someone with early onset to mid stage dementia, which has been clinically diagnosed. He needed to have an alarm on his bed and on his chair because he might be prone to wandering, and toward the end of July, he fell and knocked his head, and he had a tennis ball size knot on his head. Finally after that, they put an alarm on his bed and his chair. The follow sup that was insisted upon by the hospital like checking his blood, they refused to do, so I have had to make appointments and get him to a blood lab to see if his blood thinner needs to be changed. He had continual care checking on the status of his eye; I had to seek a private ophthalmologist. They put on events every once in a while, but there’s not any real space for them to be a real community. They’ve got a Veteran club; there’s all the trappings of it, but there’s no follow through. Some of the nurses are fantastic, and some of the aides are very good, but they are understaffed. High turnover. The food is good, but they could do more for what they charge. The specialist Brian is terrific. They could have more staff, and they could have more individualized care. Somebody who is on a dietary requirement should be looked into. There isn’t a component of dietary awareness because some things can unduly that are just to eat. You either are very consistent, or you don’t give it to him because they thin the blood. After meals, lemonade or fruit punch. There was an incident that required hospitalization in an emergency that the facility could have prevented because they were forewarned repeatedly ahead of time, and they chose to ignore it.