Reviews

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On February 19th, 2011 at 12:15AM Anonymous posted the following:

http://www.hospitalsoup.com/listing/46168-inglewood-care-centre-reviews Let me first begin my review of the Inglewood Care Center at 725 Inglewood Ave. in West Vancouver, B.C. by stating that my experience with this facility is as recent as February of 2011. As with every other senior in B.C. my father was a victim of British Columbia’s “First Available Bed” policy which forced him to be dumped into this place. It should be mentioned here that my research prior to his going there revealed that Ontario has a much more enlightened seniors care legislation where by law the First Available Bed policy was prohibited along with other such practices such as bed matching, etc. Maybe something to push your local politician towards adopting…. I brought my father to this facility to pre-view this first available bed, knowing his move-in there was inevitable. My father is currently an IC3 palliative care patient who will soon need extended care. So I viewed both the IC3 & extended care buildings of this facility. I brought along the checklist provided by this site and will use it here to guide my review. Firstly, the environment of the IC3 facility is quite dire. It is an OLD building, nearly 32 years old. It shows every second of that age although for the most part it has been relatively well maintained and undergone patchwork renovation from time to time. Yet as soon as you walk through the main entrance be prepared to have your nostrils assaulted by an assortment of sinus-curdling institutional “old building” smells. These scents are indescribable but definitely present; depressingly there. The same scent pervades the IC3 building. Hard to get away from it as it is everywhere. They definitely use artificial scent to try masking the mold/mildew/age scent of the place. Its immediately obvious. Almost offensively bad really, and the fragrant masking odors used by the facility to cover the odor are artificial and quite strong as well. The offending odor of the place is not so bad that you won’t get used to it after 20 minutes or more, but it is there. The extended care facility is a somewhat newer building and it smells somewhat better than IC3. So the irony is that to enjoy a better environment at Inglewood, one must be much sicker and that much closer to death. Not really so fair of an exchange. The noise levels of the place depend on where your room is and where the residents are. Residents’ rooms by the kitchen and laundry rooms are probably quite intolerably loud. But generally noise levels are probably acceptable as the residents are usually sitting or slumped over in lounge chairs or their wheelchairs watching TV or sleeping During our pre-view, when my father and I exited the elevator to view what would be his room, we came out into the lounge of that floor. There were about 15 residents there gathered to pass the day. All were clothed and looking relatively decent so the facility does a good job of getting the residents into their clothes and out of their rooms. However, I will never forget the looks on the faces of these poor people. It will haunt me. These poor sick, frail people have the look of the damned who have gone to hell. Some looked sadly desperate but too weak, sick or old to escape their situation. , Others faces looked vacant, empty possibly due to medication schedules. But the one look they all shared was an expression of certainty that they are there to run out the clock on their lives. For them, there is no getting out; end of the line. It was a heart breaking site. It was quite unnerving to suddenly have 10 or more pairs of eyes riveted on me and my father because our arrival was suddenly the most interesting thing in their lives at that moment. Those haunted eyes followed us as we walked slowly to what was to become my father’s new room. In the few short days of my father’s stay there, I observed that almost each resident sits in exactly the same place in the hall or the lounge, day in and day out. They have actually “staked out” a piece of territory that they call theirs and they are protective of it. A new resident must “fit” into the pecking order there. Otherwise residents don’t seem to really talk to each other much. I found that neither the IC3 or the extended care facility is air conditioned and no room has individual local heating control; no room thermostat to turn up or down. So the facility is set to one temperature. They did tell me that if one roomy is cold they can provide a small space heater. Don’t know how accountable they are about this as my father was not there long enough to test this. The IC3 facility hallway lighting is a little gloomy, a little poor especially on a rainy Vancouver day due to old style fluorescent bulbs. As stated, the place has no air conditioning. Worse, there is no fresh air ventilation for any of the rooms; none in the bathrooms. The only option is to open the sliding window in each room. And the halls seem a little crowded although maneuvering a wheelchair or walker can be done without difficulty. Each “single occupancy” room is quite spacious, but each room that has 2 people per, are squeezed into the same space as a single person would occupy. But be warned, your loved one is 100% certain to begin his/her stay at Inglewood with a room mate and that could cause problems for someone if there are personality conflicts. As with everything in our health care system, a resident’s first priority upon arrival to Inglewood is to get on the waiting list for a single room so one can have one’s privacy. The wait list for that is up to 6 months. But being the squeaky wheel that I was advocating for my father, that time frame can be adjusted by management. Furniture is sufficient for most persons’ needs and quite nice. One can bring in personal items to personalize the room. However, clearly, there is no “hominess” in this place whatsoever. First and foremost and always this is an institution; an institution where people come to be warehoused. And it must be understood and remembered that Inglewood is a FOR PROFIT institution despite being subsidized by the B.C. Govt. It is easily apparent that it is run on a “for profit” basis from stem to stern. Inglewood has a secured front entrance. Push button to get in, punch 4 digit code to get out. I asked if the place has a fire evacuation plan; didn’t get much of an answer about monthly fire drills either. However, I did see fire equipment company personnel checking equipment and discussing the facility's fire equipment and alarm systems. The family and friends can participate in activities and special holidays are observed. They claim to have a great many volunteers and do have pictures on the wall of them. Onsite religious services are provided, just not necessarily on Sundays. Apparently there are outings by bus and thoroughly enjoyed by all. The Food…. yes, family and friends can have a meal with residents. But, why would they want to? In my life I have had to eat some very bad food but what is served up at Inglewood and called food is truly repellant. The cook(s) in this facility must have failed all their Easy Bake Oven lessons as a prerequisite to work here. They must have been recruited from the very bottom of their respective chef graduating classes. Its obvious they have not the slightest concept of what flavorful, appetizing food is. This place is a true test for Chef Ramsay’s TV show Kitchen Nightmares. Upon arrival to the facility, after settling into the room my father occupied, we were just in time for lunch. It was Salmon of some sort, cooked in some not obvious way smothered with what we were told was a lemon dill sauce. On the side was a ball of rice pilaf. The salmon was probably pink salmon. Already, pink salmon is the most difficult to cook well in an institutional setting but the cheapest to purchase. It was sensationally tasteless, bland, very dry and somewhat rubbery due to its being MUCH overcooked. There appeared to be no discernable seasoning on the fish. I took one small bite to taste, could eat no more and moved to the dill sauce. Couldn’t taste dill or lemon; just the overpowering tang of wheat flour. It was a sauce tasting like flour and water; utterly disappointing, utterly horrible, an utter waste of stomach space. The rice pilaf was most likely a boxed, packaged, prepared Uncle Ben’s converted rice type of thing. Mushy, of course overcooked and foul tasting is all I could say positively about this rice. Lastly I tried the cooked broccoli spears. I could tell from the color it was also long overcooked as the florets were actually wilting over on the plate. Tasting confirmed they’d been cooked to death. Desert was a simple dish of canned peach pieces in heavy sugar syrup. My father shared my exact feelings about this slop that they presumed to call food. We tasted everything, but ate nothing. With each dish pushed away to the side by each of us we knew my father’s nutritional welfare was in dire jeopardy at this place. We were told by staff that the B.C. ministry of health funds their food budget to the tune of $5.00 per day per resident for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not sure if this is true, but if so, this would on the face of it seem to explain the unique awfulness of the food. Except that I think I could do more to provide a nutritional, appetizing meal with only a can of wet dog food. Truly it is shocking how absolutely terrible the food in this place really is. Also, their “juices”, orange, apple, cranberry, etc. turned out to be an artificial, chemical swill mixed in and dispensed by a machine. No doubt rendered from a chemical powder. There is not the slightest hint of “natural” or “real” in the juices served at this place. Forget about “fresh squeezed” anything there. Not a possibility and as truly appalling as the food. In all fairness, however, in the few days my father was there, he told me that he’s had soup on 2 occasions that was “not bad” and one roast beef dinner that was also “not bad”. Nutritionally speaking I would have to say the food must be as close to dead as could be possible due to the degree of overcookedness. One could almost call this low food value a form of nutritional strangulation. I heard numerous comments from residents about food. None of those comments were flattering. There does appear to be some diversity of menu, but who cares if its all so terrible? Based on food quality observed and tasted, and reported by my father the having of a dietary nutritionist on staff is a farce. The dining room itself is also horrible. An old worn down cave in the side of a dirt mountain would have slightly more appeal as a dining area. And the smell of the dining room. Truly bad. The facility management seems to dictate where you sit and with whom. There appears to be no choice there. In our original tour of the place I observed that there is almost no social interaction between the residents before mealtime. This also seems to be the case during the rest of the day in other parts of the facility. Residents display little life, no vitality, they are essentially living dead, simply running out the clock of their lives; doing it in tomb-like silence, except here waiting for the next “meal”. Of course, this could be due in part to the medication regime the residents are on which might render them that way. In the dining room at lunch before the food arrived, I observed not a single conversation. Not a word spoken by anyone to anyone. Not a single person was even looking at anyone else at their table or any other table. Somehow, all these residents managed to find places in the dining hall to look so that they didn’t have to look at any of their fellow residents even at the same table. How utterly lonely I felt for these people at that moment. I'd hope its not always like that, some staff may try to provide interaction, but as a first impression, it was a depressingly barren impression I was left with. Snacks served there are of equally dubious quality and nutritional value. I would think that far better food must be served in prison. If this food were served to prisoners in our penal system, I’m sure it would cause riots. Bottom line, if you want your parent to have proper food of any nutritional value while at Inglewood you must be prepared to provide it to them on a daily 3 times a day basis. The staff… Having a highly placed credible source in the Hospital Employees Union, I know that there have been many contract difficulties over the past 4 years at Inglewood. There has been frequent contract flipping. In the past 2 years there have been 4 contract flips. A very unsettling thing for the staff and a very bad thing for the residents. Each time a contract has been flipped, the food service has deteriorated, staff have been negotiated into lower wages, nursing ratios have been decreased, staff and resident morale have suffered. This is in large part due to the tender caring mercies of the British Columbia government in cutting costs. But also I was told due in part to the “For Profit” ownership of the facility. Their eye on their bottom line is an obvious indictment against having a For Profit facility in our Province care for our elderly Residents’ quality of life has possibly suffered for this “progress”. For all these reasons, I’m also told the quality of staff has decreased considerably in recent years as some of the best staff have left for elsewhere. However, there are some very excellent, dedicated staff there still, but they are spread thinly throughout the facility. A lot of staff if not all have very low morale now and some resemble the residents: blank, staring, expressionless faces shuffling about their day to day jobs. Working zombies running out the clock on each shift. I wouldn’t want some of these staff anywhere near me. The night nurse on duty the first night of my father’s stay couldn’t bother wearing work clothes. He was without a name tag and wearing street clothes; jeans of all things. Most unprofessional. Not a good impression from him. The residents seem to be treated somewhat indifferently at times by some of the staff I saw. But staff for the most part do their jobs and get the residents into and out of their clothes as they are supposed to and perform their responsibilities at least to some minimum degree. Residents do seem clean, but do not appear happy, not alert, are lethargic, vacant, blank and out of their rooms. Yet, I think if my father were to have been forced to stay there longer I might consider investing in a nanny cam of some sort to keep tabs on the staff. Just for reassurance. Apparently, background checks and criminal records checks are done on all staff. Don’t know about volunteers. Visiting hours seem generous and largely unrestricted and they do have a palliative care program. But I’ve not yet found if there is an area for family/friends to sleep. Maybe in their cars in the parking lot. I have not seen any inspection reports posted but suspect that compliance issues are slow to be addressed and slow to be correctly done. I suspect it has been a very long time since any kind of electrical maintenance inspection has been done in the IC3 facility to monitor for electrical code compliance. As an example, on the first day of my father’s stay there, the admitting nurse and I discovered an unbelievable electrical hazard at the head of my father’s bed. Being a motorized bed it has a control console attached by a long flexible spiral cord to the motor of the bed. The motor is subsequently plugged into the wall outlet. From just below the base of the control console for a length of about one foot, that spiral cord had become completely, utterly frayed through over a long period of time that it was simply being held together by the numerous wires of the cord conducting electrical control signals to the motor. And the same cord was split apart and frayed away further along the cord’s length. It too, a severe electrical hazard. Two very serious electrical hazards and code violations on the same cord had been allowed to go unnoticed for a very long time. If any of those conducting wires had had their casings cut or rubbed through so that bare metal wire had been exposed and had those bare wires been caused to touch each other, an electrical fire could have followed. The head RN was profusely apologetic for this but the administrative staff were curiously nonchalant. I had to unplug the cord from the wall myself to eliminate the danger and I specified to them that this entire cord must be replaced immediately. Their response: maintenance staff were called at some point later in the day and one guy arrived several hours later to inspect the damage. He left shortly after a quick look under the bed. It wasn’t until late the next day that someone had wrapped gray electrical tape around the live wires and cover that over with and cable tied a piece of plastic tubing around the frayed cord. A band aid fix at best and still in contravention of electrical code, I believe. The irony is that the maintenance guy who had performed the short term fix had completely missed the second cord rupture. Obviously he had not had the sense to check the entire cord as I had. I wonder as to his electrician’s credentials. Sadly lacking I suspect as he was referred to as “the maintenance man”. When I brought this cord rupture to the attention of the social worker there, she told me that Margo, the head administrator of the facility (and a member of the family owning the facility) had rationalized the whole issue by asserting that it wasn’t that much of a problem because there isn’t all that much electricity flowing through the wires to the control console. In other words, in her expert electrical analysis low voltage equals low risk of fire or electrocution. An appalling, shocking attitude to have about the safety of the residents one is responsible for. My father is now out of that facility. His stay there was thankfully short. This is a thoroughly horrible place with a disturbingly shoddy attitude toward resident care and safety. I would rate it an overall bare bones 3 out of 10. Its only saving grace is its comparison to the Capilano Care center just down the hill at 525 Clyde St. I’m told by reliable sources that the Capilano Care facility is considerably worse than Inglewood in every way. But that doesn’t mean Inglewood is acceptable. Far from it.

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