Do Not Use Future Care Chesapeake
I would recommend that anyone considering Future Care Chesapeake, in Arnold Maryland, look into any other facility and avoid a stay here.
My father stayed at this facility first as a rehab patient, and then was held over as a skilled nursing patient. We had a lot of time to see what goes on there, and experience first-hand how bad things were.
It is my family’s opinion that the very poor care received there resulted in my father’s hastened demise. We would never use this facility again.
One issue is that the systems there are behind the times. They have no central computer system, and in fact all records are still kept in paper files on paper, by hand.
Where most modern facilities have networked computers, they do not have any here. As a result, there is no fast or adequate means for oncoming staff to know the history of a patient. It often took long periods of time for staff to look up any information we needed at all on dads care. After Dad was there several months, the head nurse expressed surprise that Dad had a permanent catheter in! He only had it the entire time he was there! Even the head nurse didn’t have a clue!
One of the worst issues is that Future Care Chesapeake is staffed adequately to provide acceptable levels of care.
My family members witnessed many times when patients were calling “Nurse!” or “Help!” from their beds and rooms for long periods at a time, with no one responding.
When we first arrived, we were told that a nurse or aide would respond when my father hit is “call” button. In the hospital it was true. Not so at Future Care Chesapeake. It was not at all unusual to wait an hour or more for anyone to respond to his call button.
This was a real issue for my father. He most often would depress his call button when he needed assistance getting to his bathroom. For Dad, when he needed to go, he needed to go. Not an hour from then. The result was many humiliating and embarrassing bathroom “mistakes”.
No one likes to mess or pee themselves unnecessarily. There can be no excuse for putting people in that condition if it can be avoided. If you want someone to want to die, then force them to pee or poop themselves, and then leave them in it. That’s what happened here. Its completely unacceptable to take so long to answer a patient’s emergency call button.
The family was told that they were not allowed to help Dad to a bathroom ourselves, for liability reasons. Thankfully we learned to ignore that rule! Dad would have never made it to the bathroom on time if we followed their rules. We ended up setting a schedule, and had family members there many times a day, for hours a day, to make sure he was properly cared for.
Dad also was able to call family members at home, and so we often drove to Future Care Chesapeake ourselves, to help Dad go the bathroom, because no staff answered his emergency call button.
After hours, we often needed to find a nurse, and would walk the halls for a half hour or more and be unable to find a single available nurse or nurse’s aide! Over time, we took to doing as much of Dads care as we could, realizing that we could not get adequate care without us pitching in every day.
In addition to inadequate staffing, here were many other serious issues at Future Care Chesapeake. Dad was supposed to get a shower once a week. He only received one shower in several months there. And that one shower was only after our very vocal complaint! We took to giving him sponge baths and shampoo’s ourselves as it was easier than getting the staff to do their jobs.
Some of the staff was plain rude and some downright cruel. One of his aides simply looked at him and laughed and walked away when Dad asked for help eating, since his hands shook too much to raise food to his mouth.
Other nurses there were caring, but just too short staffed to give good care. They did the best they could, but the result was not adequate.
At one point, the Future Care Chesapeake staff gave Dad a brand new pain medication without consulting family. It caused Dad to go completely unconscious and to become totally unresponsive. Dad laid in this state for hours because the nursing staff could not find a supervisor to approve his transfer to the hospital. Luckily our family showed up and demanded an immediate hospital transfer. I doubt Dad would have made it through the night if our family had not been there to advocate for him. The aides were saying “he is ok” and slapping his face telling Dad to “wake up”! It turned out he had an adverse drug reaction and a MRSA bladder infection !
Then there was plain incompetence or callous disregard for my Dad. Dad had a permanent catheter that needed to be changed every month. Otherwise infection was likely. We learned quite by accident that the staff had skipped changing his catheter for a whole month! When asked why, we were told that Dad had told the nurse he didn’t want it changed! While we don’t believe this, it doesn’t matter. It should have been changed, no matter what. It should also have been brought immediately to the attention of his family and doctors if he didn’t want it done because it was a critical, potentially life threatening health risk. Instead, no one was told! The Future Care Chesapeake staff knew that the family had a medical power of attorney, and yet no one mentioned this to the family, or to his charge doctor, or his urologist!
Dad died not long after, from urinary sepsis, the MRSA urinary infection he contracted while at Future Care Chesapeake! Yes, died from a urinary infection, certainly made worse by his catheter not being changed as ordered by his doctors the month before.
I would not recommend that anyone stay at Future Care Chesapeake, or leave anyone they love here.
If you are not sure, I encourage you to walk the halls at Future Care. Listen for patients calling out from their rooms. See if you notice the odor of feces. And ask patients if they always get a response when they push the call button, and how long it takes to get help. There are far better choices available.