WhiteStone

I just wanted to give a big shout out for the Director and Staff of Community Life Services at Whitestone's Care & Wellness Center! Each and every one of them are truly outstanding - providing a tremendous amount of love and support to the residents of the CWC and their families. Just to provide one example, a few months ago the Community Life Services team hosted "Blessings & Bubbles", an activity that provided an opportunity for residents to relax, interact, blow bubbles, and talk about the things in life they are most thankful for. The team sent me a precious video of my Mom as she was blowing bubbles and sharing the things she is thankful for! That's just how thoughtful the team is! Today, they collaborated with AuthoraCare to host a "wheelchair carwash", that included blowing bubbles (a fan favorite!) and yummy popsicles for all. Later in the day they took a group to The Mad Platter to enjoy some pottery making. There really is no end to the staff's creativity nor to the care they provide to the residents on a daily basis. They are truly a blessing!

My family has had a long term relationship with Whitestone since it was The Masonic Home. I had 2 grandparents live their final years with a good level of professional care. The staff were reliable and attentive. More recently my father moved into skilled nursing care for nearly 2 years. At first we were very pleased with some of the changes. The facility had a re-do and the common spaces and rooms were appointed at a very high level. Despite a warm welcome, we quickly found the care not adequate. The staff that was there was overworked and unable to meet basic patient needs. We hired sitters and found that caused the staff at WS to completely stop checking. After great frustration we moved my father to a different skilled nursing center. While it is a more basic facility, already we are shocked to see how lacking the care was at Whitestone. In the 2 years that my father was in their care, many families on his hallway were unhappy. Complaints were brought forward and marginally addressed. Communication with both nursing staff and management is poor. My fathers medication administration was regularly wrong or inadequate. The staff is supposed to make notes in the portal so a family can follow along but it was not regularly updated. A member of our family is a nurse practitioner and she was dismayed. My family asked for regular care plan meetings, we hired sitters and still the care was inadequate. My mother spent a couple of hours everyday checking on him, asking questions, speaking with staff. Its hard to fathom why Whitestone could not better address basic needs. My guess this is a top-down problem starting with the Director. The areas I would highly suggest people look at before choosing Whitestone- 1- how often will the patient be changed? We often found my father with dirty diapers and would press the call button only to wait close to an hour to have him changed. 2- how much time will staff spend assisting with feeding? They rushed or skipped meal

I give them two only because they did have a couple of good people. (Care and Wellness Center) Changing meds adding meds taking away meds without discussing with family. Even gave meds after being told not to give. Taking heart meds away when not supposed to. This was a couple of years ago and I doubt it has changed because I could not get a change for nearly six years. I know you think why did I not move well the answer is I could not find anywhere that was better. They were the third place I was at and same management for several years. Complained to State and that was a joke! If you will go down further to a complaint by the name NURSE and you will get a good idea of what goes on there. If you read the nurse also read the answer from Whitestone. Their response says they would like to speak to the nurse about their concerns and it gives the number of the Executive Director. I did speak to the Executive Director and he did the same as everyone else NOTHING!