LTCK
Apr 2026
We'll call it a 2.5. My father was here for 6 weeks to regain strength following a hospital stay. Our experience was mixed. The Good: It's a nice building. It's clean. They decorate for holidays and have activities for residents and try to keep it festive. Dr. Saeed was incredibly thorough. Jaime, our social worker, was supportive and helpful. Julian, Peter, Bradley and Andrew were all amazing therapists and if we could have brought them home with us, we would have. The food is nutritious and comes from the same meal planning as Atrium Health. it is well presented (He hated it, but who likes hospital food, really?) The Not So Good: The quality of his general care started to scale off after a couple of weeks. Call buttons went longer and longer unanswered. Sometimes no staff were to be found. Sometimes the staff were giggling and standing around in the halls chatting or ordering doordash (while call buttons were going off). Some days he didn't get therapy because there was no one there to do it, presumably because of understaffing. This was particularly frustrating when Humana would attempt to end coverage and we'd have to appeal, because he hadn't progressed enough in his therapy to come home yet, yet we knew there were days when he wasn't getting what insurance was paying for. Showers were infrequent. We would be promised showers and then he wouldn't get them. Many days, towards the end of his stay in particular, he sat in soiled diapers. Sometimes he was expected to eat breakfast in a soiled diaper because no one had come to change him for over an hour, but it was time to eat. He ended up with compromised skin integrity as a result, and a day and a half after his discharge home, we had to call an ambulance because he spiked a high fever, was delirious, and ended up being diagnosed with a complicated, drug resistant UTI, presumably because he'd been sitting in soiled diapers. I think Jesse Helps Nursing Center has the capacity to be a great facility. They have extremely high ratings on Medicare.gov, which is based on inspection related data. This is a big deal! But there's a reason the Google ratings are terrible. They need more staff, and they need staff who care. I understand it's a catch .22 when corporate financials stack up against an already difficult job that often underpays. We're in the process of finding new rehab now that he's about to be discharged for his UTI. He's incredibly weak from the illness, and has lost a lot of his prior progress with PT and OT. He told us he'd "rather die than go back to Jesse Helms." So we're trying to find another option, which is really unfortunate because it was 5 miles from home. Now we're looking at places over 30 minutes away just to find better care.
