The Nursing Home Search Begins

OK, it's official - I've started to visit nursing homes.  First site visit was this morning.  I'm only five months behind schedule.

Monday morning I drew up my short list - five nursing homes and four assisted living facilities, all recommended by D, the local geriatric care manager.  Monday afternoon I started making phone calls, and by yesterday I'd scheduled two appointments - this morning's, and another on Friday morning.  Two additional nursing homes are sending me brochures, and one hasn't yet called back.  I haven't contacted the assisted living facilities yet - that'll follow over the next few days.

Impressions?  Not many, not so far - it's too early in the game.  But for what it's worth, this morning's facility - let's call it Nursing Home 2, since that's where it sits in D's priority list - was very clean and very polished and left me feeling slightly depressed.  It's on a decent amount of land on a semi-rural road in Potomac, MD.  It's new but wants to seem old and established - sort of like the luxury McApartment Complex I live in,  It has 19th Century moldings and trimmings, and looks like it was built to resemble a minor European palace out of cheap materials and fittings that somebody bought off the shelf at Home Depot.

The admissions officer who gave me the tour was polished and attractive in a surfacy kind of way, like the building.  She was friendly and seemed concerned and engaged, and got me through in a half-hour without asking too many questions or offering too much information.  The lobby was full of staff - no patients in evidence.  Except for trips to rehab, the patients seemed to be concentrated on their residential floors.  Patients were very clean ("he's a very clean old man").  Some were attending activities and some were being moved from place to place, mostly in wheelchairs.  Staff interacted with them cheerfully and generically, the way you'd talk to a child you'd never met before. 

The first set of rooms I saw were decently attractive - hospital rooms but with carpeting and some personal decorations, mostly photographs.  The Alzheimer's unit wasn't quite up to that level.  It had once been the acute care floor, and because they'd had to work with IV lines and various spills, they'd left out the carpeting.  Institutional linoleum instead - colder.  The floor can be locked to prevent wandering.

Admissions tour woman told me it'd be fine for me to come back, maybe on a weekend, when there are visitors.  She also told me they're a pet-friendly facility - pets can't stay but can visit.  That might be a factor.  I took an information kit that outlines the (high) fees, and left for the day.

It sounds like I'm negative but in fact I'm trying to stay neutral and reserve judgment.  I don't have a frame of reference and I don't have a standard of comparison.  That'll come.  It may be that this is the best that's out there.  If so, fine - it was modern and seemed safe.  It also seemed like a decorative warehouse for the not-quite-dead.  Naturally, that bothers me.  But it could be that that's what these places actually are.  Sad - but typical of the society we're living in, the kind that builds you a convenient, expensive storage facility that looks like home, but isn't, then charges you a premium for it.

It's also possible that there's better stuff out there.  The point of this first round of visits is to find that out.

Tomorrow, a New York visit.  Friday, Nursing Home 1.  Then on from there.

Comments

[Shu]

Congratulations on beginning. I absolutely recognize your reaction to the place you saw. In working down our list of places to visit, my daughter or I would be struck by 'something' about each one that made us draw back from enthusiasm. Nothing "wrong" that you could fault, just something not there.

We kept on until we found the one my momma's now in -- it was the oldest, it was downtown so not swanky, but there was some undefinable 'something' that was actually positive. I think it was the first place where we met with the head nurse and she actually talked about the CARE my mother would receive, how she would be treated and her specific situation would be dealt with. That was the one thing that made me exhale and feel things could be, if not OKAY, at least NOT SO BAD.

Yeah, there are times I wonder if we should have picked some place a bit slicker, closer, more polished. But I think if we had, my mother wouldn't still be with us.

You'll know what's best for the situation after you've visited a few places and feel where you are instinctually drawn. You'll possibly be surprised at how quickly you have your own inner shorthand about you rank them.

Sending you great supportive thoughts,
Shu

[Kathy]

Good luck with this next difficult step. I found it to be helpful to take another person with me to act as a double check regarding my impression. So, I took a real critic - my 21 year old son. One might think that such a young person might lack the "keen percetion" of the more mature. No so fast.. the kid was a human BS detector, immune to the sales job and rather blunt. We selected the place he was drawn to and it has worked out well.

I can only add something I can tell you already know - trust you gut and trust but verify.

Wishing you good luck.

[Flouncy]

If your father can walk at all - even with a walker - I encourage you to check out licensed residential care homes, also known as board and care homes.

(Usually they are licensed as ALFs, which is why there is an initial ambulatory requirement. If you later lose the ability to walk or require a two-person lift, most of these places will allow you to 'age in place', particularly if they specialize in Alz).

My mother is in a fully licensed residential care home that is certified for Alz/dementia care.

The company that runs it operates several of these homes in our city. Each one has about eight residents. It is a wonderful, clean and bright place with excellent and sincerely compassionate and patient caregivers. She's very happy, and it is a much better fit than her larger memory-care ALF.

The caregiver ratio is very good, so she's getting a lot of personalized attention.

Several doctors-on-call services visit and of course Medicare will pay for home health for lab draws, etc. So it's a lot more like staying at home than a NH or traditional ALF is.

[Alan G. Ampolsk]

Thanks, this is very helpful advice. I'll try to listen to my gut and also bring another gut along - probably on seconf visits after I've narrowed the list down somewhat.

Flouncy - I have a feeling you're right about the ALF's. I've got a few to check out. My first reaction when I heard about them was to be concerned that they wouldn't be up to my father's level of illness, but when it comes to physical issues he's still in OK shape - decently mobile. And I have a feeling I'm going to like the personal approach as opposed to the big institutional grind. Again, I'm trying to reserve judgment but it wouldn't surprise me if I came out that way.

More reports soon...