State:: Missouri

Occupation:: Retired Secretary

My mother was in a serious car accident. In 55 days, we were in 5 different facilities & had 5 surgeries. The biggest problem is lack of communication & continuity in patient care. It is not a staff problem, but a problem with the “system”. Even moving within a facility has the same problems. Nobody knows what the patient history is, what orders have been done nor do they communicate with previous staff. Everything is on a computer program that is hard to track & easy to lose info. The staff is never the same. It was like starting over every time we moved or had new staff which was constant. I had to be there 24/7 to know what was going on & still did not always know. I had to second guess staff & question whether they knew what had been ordered by someone else. Because everybody is a specialist, they are only concerned with their area of specialty & what they prescribe. Mom had 12 different injuries. They were never treated as parts of a whole body, just individual injuries. We had to go 250 miles away for surgery. Medicare did not want to pay the ambulance trip back to the local rehab because they wanted us to stay where we were. We could not stay 250 miles away, 24/7 for several months. Letting the government take over would be another problem. Anything the government gets involved with is a mess with paperwork & cost. We are continuing into our 3rd month since the wreck & have several more months to go. We are in our 6th facility. Same problems no matter where you are. It has been a nightmare & continues to be so, probably for the rest of my Mom’s life. I do not know the solutions but definitely know the problems.