1 Star User Review
My mother was in Ridgeview "Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing" in April and May of 2015. I put part of their name in quotes because very little of those words apply to any of the care my mother received. She received poor care from the great majority of the staff. She was supposed to be getting physical, occupational and speech therapy, however, the physical therapy, in particular, would not treat her if she complained of any problems. My mother had impaired thinking from her diagnosis and surgery and was unable to understand that therapy would be necessary to improve her condition and would often refuse it. The physical therapy staff would not make concentrated efforts to encourage, redirect and motivate her to participate. It seemed like they had no understanding that my mother was not able to make a sound judgement about her need for therapy to regain her abilities. When she would say no, they would make few attempts to get her to cooperate and then just leave her in the bed.
One other very disturbing thing was that the physical therapy staff performing the daily care in the building was Physical Therapist
Assistants (PTA) and not Physical Therapists (PT). One PTA in particular represented herself as a Physical Therapist and made changes to the treatment plan and evaluated my mother as if she was a Physical Therapist. This was done in violation of her practice act with the State of Texas. Her state license certificate was expired and dated in 2013 so I am not even sure she was licensed. I never saw a PT the entire month that my mother was in Ridgeview.
The nursing staff appeared to be overworked at times and lazy at other times. Many times my mother would push the call button for assistance and she would wait for over an hour and still nobody would come. The light outside her door in the hall was on but it was ignored. This would happen at all hours of the day and night.
The administrator and Director of Nurses appeared clueless about the problems and even when I told them about them, nothing was improved. It seemed like the lower level staff basically did not follow any orders to correct the situations or they were never actually told to do anything different to correct the problems.
The facility doctor came into my mother's room a couple of days after she was admitted and told her that she was terminal. He basically told her she would die. My mom had never, to that point, talked about funeral arrangements as all of our emphasis was on aggressive therapy and treatment. I found out later that this doctor has not even looked at her chart to find out the plan of care was for her to get aggressive rehab and treatment. This was very disappointing as older people tend to believe anything a doctor says. It took many days to undo the damage this doctor did to her with just a few words. Other doctors who were managing her care would write specific orders for treatment or medications and the orders would be ignored and not implemented by the nursing staff.
My mother actually declined in her physical and functional ability while on their "specialized rehab" care. She lost much of her ability to walk and transfer in and out of bed as well as her ability to dress independently. I personally came into the room several times and found her attempting to transfer out of bed by herself with no staff assistance and she was almost falling. Since we got her out of Ridgeview and back home with home health, she has done much better and regained much of her physical ability and functional ability.
Although this facility LOOKS good when you first walk in, you need to avoid this nursing and rehab facility like the plague. It has a bad reputation in the community, I found out after the fact, and is well known for its deficiencies and many problems. Ignore the good ratings from the state as well, the state inspectors are a joke as well.