St. John's Rehabilitation Center

When Richard went back to UNM for a MRSA infection in his ankle, he was given a very strong dose of antibiotics and surgery.  We were told by the surgeon at UNM Hospital that the infection did not get on the hardware, but that it was close.  If infection, gets on hardware, it will never die.  The hardware has to come out. The good new was that he could keep the hardware that they originally placed there.  At that time, we thought he would go back to Kindred Hospital. The insurance company decided otherwise. They sent him to St. John's Rehabilitation Center in Albuquerque.

Before we left the hospital, the doctor talked to us and emphasised that it was so important that he get his antibiotics, which were delivered through an IV in the hospital, but would not be when he left. Both of us where there when he told us this information and I cannot explain how strongly he stressed making sure that he got his antibiotics.

Upon getting the facility, he immediately didn't like it. which I chalked up to the fact that every place had a lower level of care than the facility before it.  One of the employees hit his injured foot HARD and he was in excruciating pain because of it.  That happened within the first 24 hours.  He had a roommate and the facility did not provide a TV for the patients so you were required to bring your own if you wanted one. Richard had a CD player but it was knocked off the table so many times that it didn't work.  I purchased him a DVD player and my sister-in-law, who was visiting got him a protective case for it, so hopefully it would not end up as the CD player did.  He loves to read, but he could not read because he couldn't hold the books with one arm and one hand injured. This was before the time of iPads, at least the iPads in our family.

Richard lost quite a bit of weight before he went into St. John's, but the food was inedible there so he lost even more.  He met with the cook and the nutritionalist while he was there but nothing was done to help him feel like he could eat the food that was placed before him.  It made my stomach crawl.  I couldn't eat any of it.  Fortunately for both of us, the 40 days he was there, I was out of school for about half of them, so I took food in to him almost daily once school was out.

The first six days Richard kept saying that he didn't think he was getting his antibiotics, but knowing how important they were, I couldn't imagine that they would not be giving them to him.  He would ask daily.  I went to the nurses to ask and they reassured me that he was getting his antibiotic.  We found out that he had not been getting them AT ALL after he had been there for six days.  Six days with no antibiotic on a MRSA infection in an area that was already threatened to be amputated before the infection!  They confessed this to him one afternoon about 4:00 but said that it was too late in the day to do anything about it that day and they would call in the morning. Richard called me in a panic.  I told him that I would try to get through to the hospital and told him to do the same.  I was not successful in getting through.  This is one of the problems with having care at a place like UNM.  It is practically impossible to talk to a person unless you are there personally.  I was calling from Los Alamos and he was calling from St. John's with no way to get there in person, so I feel like our hands were tied.  I don't know how he did it, but Richard finally got through to someone at the orthopedic clinic and they were upset that he had not been getting it and said they would take care of it.  It still took almost another 24 hours before the first antibiotic was given to Richard.

I tried to call United Healthcare to see if someone could be "in charge" of Richard's care since obviously things were falling through the cracks.  Nothing really ever happened with that, which was frustrating to me.

When you do not have the use of either of your arms and hands, and you can't weight bear on your legs, you are pretty much a hostage to those who are overseeing your care.  After Richard had been there for 10 days, it was our anniversary.  At that point, he had not even had a bath or shower in the entire time he was there.  I insisted that he get a shower for our anniversary and they were not very happy about it, but they finally did it.  When he used the bed pan, they would wipe him and tell him he was clean, but he would attempt to wipe himself after they had left and found that he was not clean.  I had to provide wipes for him because they never had enough, and when I did, employees would take the wipes that I had provided.

This facility provided OT and PT services and Richard had doctors orders for them, but most of the time they would come in and say, "You don't really want to go to therapy today, do you Mr. Elliott?" Please understand that in order to get him to the therapy room, he had to be lifted with a hoyer lift and placed in a wheelchair.  This was not an easy task, and not one that took only one person. Once when he was in OT therapy, the therapist jerked and twisted his bad arm and Richard feels that she broke the arm.  He mentioned it when he went to an appointment at UNM and they said that there was no healing showing in that arm.  They didn't bluntly say so, but made it clear that they didn't want to get involved in any malpractice issues. This is where the problems with the arm that are still not solved began.

At one point Richard sat there and watched a situation take place across the hall where the patient needed oxygen, which the facility did not have the capacity to provide.  The family members were threatening the people in authority at the facility.  Later that night, the patient died.  Richard was later diagnosed with PTSD just from being in this facility!

At one point he had to use a broken bedpan that would pinch him because they claimed that any other bedpans were locked for the weekend and they couldn't do anything about it.

The insurance denied medical transport to get Richard to his appointments at UNM, but they are ones that transferred him to this facility and there is no way for him to get into any vehicle other than an ambulance. Believe me, we tried!

We contacted the New Mexico State Ombudsman to file a complaint agains the facility.  They sent someone out to check it out, but they didn't stay long enough in Richard's room to even hear the list of complaints that he had. It was a joke!

The infection did get on the hardware because of the antibiotics being withheld for an extended period of time, and he had to go back and have the hardware taken out. We didn't discover this until after Richard was home for a period of time, so I am not really sure that it belongs in this post, but because it was negligence on the part of St. John's, I feel that it should be included. Because the hardware had to be taken out, the bones shifted and have been grossly affected.  He has been told that he needs his ankle fused, but in order to do that, he would have to be non-weighbearing for 6-8 weeks.  When he was non-weight bearing during this time, he lost so much muscle that when he put his feet over the bed, the blood would pool in the feet, they would turn bright red, and he would be in a great deal of pain.  His body just didn't have the strength to pump the blood back up the legs.  He is afraid to have the surgery because of this and the fact that he could get MRSA again just because they open everything up again.  Therefore, he is still dealing with the aftermath of St. John's almost 10 years later.

Richard's insurance covered 100 days in a healthcare facility, and we wasted 40 of them at St. John's. That also means that he didn't get the time he needed for rehab at HealthSouth, but HealthSouth will get it's own blogpost so I will tell about that there.

I called the insurance company and told them that I felt that I could take better care of him at home and I wanted permission to do so.  They said that they would call me back.  When I called them back, because they didn't call me, they told me that if I named the facility, they would sent him to it.  We did some research and found that the best rehab facility in Albuquerque was HealthSouth, so that is what we asked for.  HealthSouth had very specific requirements for a patient to be admitted there.  They required that the patient be able to do at least 3 hours of therapy every day.  Richard was not cleared to do any weight bearing therapy at that point.  After he was cleared, we had to wait for an opening at HealthSouth and then they almost denied him because of the MRSA infection. In the end, Richard was transferred to HealthSouth. Thank God!

As we were doing paperwork to leave, one of the employees asked me what they had done right.  I tried to think of something.  I really did, but I couldn't not think of ONE thing that they did correctly.

Lessons to be learned: Don't trust your insurance company to make medical decisions.  Don't trust the facility to have your best interest in mind.  Don't trust any medical professionals to do their jobs, and when they don't do their jobs, don't expect any other professional to provide verification that the job was botched.  Don't expect to be treated with respect at a facility for sick people because no one will believe you, thinking that you are senile.  Yes, this whole experience was a nightmare.  Fortunately for me, I got to spend the night elsewhere, but Richard had to sit there wondering if he was the next victim of the facility and the insurance company's decisions. Know what is going on and advocate for yourself if you are the patient, and your family member if you are not the patient.  And most important: STAY AWAY FROM ST. JOHN's REHABILITATION CENTER in Albuquerque!

Years later when my father was at a facility and they were not responding to his calls, he called 911.  I wish I would have thought of that!