IF YOU REALLY LOVE A FAMILY MEMBER, DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER VMP AS AN OPTION! My 88 year old Mom went into this facility in Oct., 2015 & in July, 2016 left not being able to walk! We placed her there for a broken bone in her upper arm which had to heal 18 weeks. Within that time, she was provided with no physical therapy. Half the time, the aides never put her sling on, put it on wrong, upside down &never placed her arm across her body like it should have been. When they finally tried therapy, the first thing the therapist said to Mom was "You will never walk again!" She had been walking at home with her walker just fine at home. She had a mild stroke several years before & her left hand would fall off the walker, but she would or a family member would put it back on & away she'd go. But at VMP, they refused to even let her try walking with her walker & made her walk with an Eva walker which is one you basically lay the top of your body on. While doing this in the hallway, the therapist didn't think my Mom was taking big enough steps & would take her foot & kick my Mom's foot forward. This scared my Mom, so she didn't want therapy any more. So that was it. They did no leg exercises with her or anything to keep her legs strong. She was standing with help when getting into bed, but the lack of strength in her legs deteriorated. They started using a lift. The staff was never anywhere to be found. We were there every day after day since it was close to our home. My Dad would get up to look for the aides & they'd all be in a glassed room behind the nurses station all whooping it up & hollering. They'd see my dad & they'd all come running out to answer the many call button that were on. Other aides were found in family gathering rooms reading the newspaper while bells went off. Dad caught one & and she, too, jumped up & went to answer calls. They never changed Mom's oxygen lines to her nose, nor the filter for the oxygen converter she was hooked up. It was filthy before we thought of it & asked them to clean it. That took weeks before they did. They'd drop the nosepiece on the floor and then put it in my mom's nose again. Mom received many cuts on her body as her left arm, affected by the stroke, she couldn't lift herself. She rec'd a gouge in her elbow when staff lifted her off the toilet & it caught on the arms on the toilet. Her hand got caught in the wheelchair & sliced a cut between her thumb and forefinger, she received a huge hematoma (bruise) on her leg because aides didn't look where her leg was when lifting her into bed & her leg was under the frame of the bed, which got raked against the bedframe from her ankle to her knee. Staff nurse was freaked out at how huge my mom's leg had swollen out, that she had an ambulance send her to the ER to check if anything was broken. Thankfully nothing was broke, but by that time they were using a lift that cradled around her legs to transport her to the bathroom & in bed & the lift pads pushed right on the spot where the bruise was. Head nurse there insisted the lift did not touch Mom's bruise, but never came to actually see. My Mom would scream out in pain every time they used the lift! Medication was a joke. They'd crush it up with applesauce & spooned it in Mom's mouth. Nurse dropped something on Mom's lap & said it was applesauce. After the nurse left, I checked & it was a med covered in applesauce, starting to dissolve. I showed the nurse immediately in the hall, & she made nothing of the fact, Mom missed on of her prescribed meds. While at VMP, Mom started coughing & coughing. Staff did a swallowing study & said Mom was to be on thick liquids & a chopped diet as they said food & water was leaking into her lungs (we have since found out that this was not true). Everybody in that facility were hacking & coughing all the time. They had "clean air" boxes on the walls in rooms, lunchroom, etc, but I'm sure they never cleaned them or changed the filters in those as we were there daily Oct. 15 to July 16, never saw any maintenance work on those wall "clean air" boxes at all. We would have many meetings w/the Social Worker (which they went through 3 in that time period), head nurse, therapy boss, & many others. We would express the same concerns over & over. They always had an excuse, or promised to check into this or that, and never did a thing. It was like talking to a wall. I asked for incident reports regarding my Mom's injuries, but never rec'd them. My Mom was 1st in a shared room with a rude lady who would play her tv so loud it would drown out ours. We would ask her to turn it down, but she never did & complained that we were "swearing" at her about it. So we couldn't talk to her & had to have an aide come in & turn her tv down every time she'd turn it on! Because of the mishmash of TV's my Mom lost her hearing even with her hearing aides in. I think it was too much for her brain to process. We finally got Mom in a private room & her hearing slowly started coming back. If Mom had needed a diaper change, we'd ring he call button & one aide would come in, turn off the call button & state she'd be right back. Up to 20-30 minutes went by & finally another aide would come back while my Mom sat in her feces for that period of time. They seldom put on the skin protective balm they were supposed to prevent the breakdown of skin on her hind end & front. By this time, we were outraged at the lack of care by the aides, nurses, & Staff at the family meetings, we did what we were supposed to & contacted the Ombudsman in charge of checking on nursing homes in SE Wisconsin. She indicated she would call and check with the Social Worker, but my concerns were mostly nursing care & we should contact the State of Wisconsin Nurse who monitors nursing homes. I left a very detailed message as to Mom's injuries and care. I rec'd a return call from the State Nurse and again reiterated my mom's injuries in great detail. She said she would check into it by going through Mom's file. I rec'd a letter where it stated that the therapist did tell my Mom she'd never walk again but denied ever pushing her foot forward. There was nothing regarding Mom's injuries. I again called the State Nurse & questioned her why she did not write anything about Mom's injuries. She stated she only went through Mom's chart. Apparently, there were no incident reports regarding Mom's injuries she rec'd by the hands of the staff at VMP. I got a call from the State Nurse stating a full out investigation of VMP was going to happen because they were against Medicare legal guidelines in not documenting my Mom's injuries in her file. We had asked VMP Soc. Worker many times to help us find another nursing home for my Mom, which they never followed through with at all. That would mean that they'd lose money if we got my Mom out of their facility. In the meantime, they framed my Dad. They day after the State Nurse contacted VMP, my Dad was trying to unclip a sound amplifier from my Mom's shirt & it slipped, Dad tried to catch it, but it hit Mom on the hand & she yelled "ouch." It just so happened that there was a nurse right outside her room door who reported that she saw my Dad hit my Mom on the hand. They called the local police, & kicked my Dad out of the facility. I quickly drove there & was w/Mom at lunch. As soon as the Soc Wrkr saw me, she immediately called me in an office to talk about what the nurse supposed had witnessed. They kept on over & over. Little did we know, at that time, the West Allis PD was questioning my Mom. She was barely verbal & talked just words. The officer should not have been allowed to question Mom w/o family present, meaning me, but I was kept away by the Soc Wrk. Then the cop came to talk to me & said my Mom stated, my Dad hit her, that she did not want to go home because she was afraid of him, etc. How could the officer question someone who could barely hear or talk? I stated that after 68 years of marriage, my Dad would never hit my Mom & never ever did nor hit my brother or I growing up. The cop filed an elderly abuse report against my Dad. We know this was the facilities doing in retaliation for getting the State to investigate their facility. My Dad was not allowed back into the facility. I'd go see Mom & wrote on a dry erase board what was going on when she asked were her husband (Dad) was. She denied saying anything that the cop said she indicated & for over a week, all she did was cry out, "where's my husband, I love my husband, I want my husband. This went on almost 24 hours. And this isn't cruel & Unusual Punishment by the nursing home toward my mom by not letting Dad visit. After about a week of Mom's cries, VMP called our house stating Dad could visit, but a staff member would have to be present the whole time. My dad was outraged having them treat him like a felon, & refused. It wasn't until my brother got involved & the whole family showed up, that Dad went to visit. My mom just cried when she saw Dad. My brother just about had an all out brawl with the Staff Dept. heads we had dealt with before. Finally, a head administrator came in & listened to our concerns, stating he never knew of any of the stuff going on with the nurses or aides. I stated that maybe had he come out of his glorious office once in a while and survey the goings on, this would never had escalated to this extent. He agreed! We finally pro-actively took it upon ourselves to find another nursing home who would take Medicare & Medicaid. It was like a race to get my mom out of VMP's incompetent, lying facility. We didn't have a lot of time as we felt this was now very urgent! We didn't want the staff there to take all this out on my Mom when we weren't there, like at night or early a.m.'s. Thank God we found a facility, but unfortunately it is 15 miles away, so we have to travel 30 miles round trip to see Mom. A lot of facilities were full or had to keep rooms open for the people in independent living who had a contract so if they needed nursing home care, they were guaranteed a room. Other facilities wouldn't accept patients with Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid is something nursing homes sometimes don't accept patients with. IF YOU LOVE THE PERSON YOU ARE NEEDING TO PUT INTO A NURSING HOME SETTING, DO NOT CHOOSE VILLAGE AT MANOR PARK! YOU WILL DEFINITELY REGRET IT. I lastly want to mention that the State Nurse told me there had been 2 other complaints she had to check out by others at the facility. We saw several residents that were fine one day and died the next there, too. Scary! I would have given NO STARS for VMP, but I had to pick one or this story would not post!
by Diane Shtaida
xxx.xxx.106.44
October 19, 2016
