Accordius Health at Mooresville

I came here from the hospital after I broke my femur. Was mobile with a walker at discharge from the hospital. Once admitted to Accordius I was not allowed to use the walker until I was evaluated by PT. After being in bed for a while I needed to go to the bathroom. I pushed the call light. Nobody came. After about 20 minutes of waiting, I started yelling through the closed door that I needed help. Another 20 minutes passed before someone finally came and brought a bed pan, making excuses why nobody came sooner. After being in this "facility" for over 20 hours, I was finally given a walker to use. I waited 2 hours for pain meds tonight. I also asked for a snack because the food they serve is inedible. Breakfast was an over boiled egg that was the consistency of rubber and some kind of congealed cream of wheat. Lunch looked like Beef a Roni and canned peas. Dinner was a repeat of lunch. Honestly, if you have other options, go somewhere else.

Aging parents and grandparents can present all of us with challenges. As they get older, health can begin to fail or an event like a fall can start your journey towards a master’s degree on our nation’s messed up healthcare system. But with Medicare, things get complicated quickly. The Emergency Room is covered for just 3 days leaving you with some serious unknowns for longer-term rehab needs for your loved ones. Since most families only deal with rare medical emergencies once in a blue moon, you end up jumping in with both feet into some very icy waters, like we did. Every journey starts with high hopes. But when it comes to healthcare, not all facilities are created equal. How your loved ones are cared for and treated on an emotional level can radically affect outcomes. That’s why the most important thing you can do as an advocate for your family member in need is to understand the differences between the “party line” and reality. The party line is what you’re told when you take a tour of a facility. It’s also reinforced over the phone when you call in. With the advent of blogs and social media, it’s easier than ever for all of us to band together and share more of these realities so others can make better decisions. In the end, there are just some facilities that should be avoided. Take the Brian Center in Mooresville for example. Their party line is so far from reality it is horrifyingly shocking. And while some examples may seem far-fetched or unreal, know that as we experienced them first hand we had trouble grasping the reality of them as well. Below are our top 10 reasons to avoid the Brian Center in Mooresville like the [removed] 1. NATURE [removed] After an “event” like a fall or surgery, your loved one will most likely start off using a bedpan. While this is rarely the end of the world, the Brian Center in Mooresville takes it one step further – they’ll let your loved one stew in their own filth for hours on end before a changing. For example, waits of two to three hours were typical unless family was present – and even with family present and demanding staff attention, a 45-minute to one-hour wait was typical. Not only is this unsanitary, leading to a bacterial infection with our loved one, but it is humiliating as well. The Brian Center in Mooresville will tell you they check on patients every 15 minutes (party line). This will make you feel good – until you witness the reality that they are checked on about once a 12-hour shift –if you’re lucky. 2. MEDICATION [removed] Medications can have all sorts of nasty side effects like constipation, dehydration and depletion of electrolytes that create dangerous situations for the elderly. Mixing drugs together can also create confusion and strange behavioral side effects. Not to worry though, the Brian Center at Mooresville will pump your loved ones into catatonic vegetables with little regard to the consequences. Then, when they’re high on pain medications and other drugs, the Brian Center at Mooresville will witness behavioral incidents and apply even more drugs and create more dangerous combinations. Our loved one entered the facility with a straightforward injury but left on depression medication, dangerously low sodium levels, and pneumonia – none of which she had ever had in her entire life and all of which were well documented side effects of drugs she was given that the family never approved (and cautioned heavily against). 3. [removed] The elderly need a special hand, and not just a physical one. A solid emotional bedside manner is usually the minimum cost of entry to care for the elderly. But when you hire minimum wage employees, many of whom barely have training, you can expect not care, but carelessness. At the Brian Center in Mooresville, our loved one had her blankets ripped off in anger, her injury aggravated from rough handling, and even hoarseness one evening from begging for over an hour for help in getting more comfortable from the pain. 4. SOYLENT [removed] Well, it’s not people they serve at the Brian Center at Mooresville, it’s more like food your dogs would have trouble eating. A stay at this facility will leave you dreaming for some of the fast food the staff eats as they laugh and joke around because they’re too busy to help their patients eat. If your loved one has any taste buds left, you can expect massive loss of appetite. For example, the first night our loved one was in the facility the food was summarily dropped off in the room while our loved one was sleeping. What’s worse – crappy food, or cold crappy food? We’re still not sure. 5. COMMUNICATION [removed] The party line is delivered efficiently whenever you call. But being in the facility is quite different. You can expect no notification when medications change and everything is always just dandy with your loved one who is “going just fine”. For example, we were told our loved one was recovering nicely despite the fact that we knew from firsthand experience that she was eating poorly and being overmedicated against her wishes. Suffice it to say that the party line is so strongly adhered to at this facility that you can put money on the fact that they know absolutely nothing about the details of your loved one when you call. You can also be assured that any follow up action items the staff is supposed to take will never be completed. 6. ERRORS & [removed] Most facilities rigorously chart and document medications and care. But at the Brian Center in Mooresville, data is separated between manual notebooks, some sort of centralized database and the staff’s poor memory. This creates a nightmare if you are trying to determine what medications your loved one was given. For example, it took us 45 minutes and research with three different staff members (one of which barely spoke English) to determine the last time pain medications were administered. In the end, the only reason we figured out the whole story was because we witnessed medications being given firsthand – and they were never documented anywhere. Want to know the best part? When we finally had her transferred, the transfer request was initiated by someone with no power of attorney. We remain confident to this day that we could have (and probably should have) evacuated the entire building to other facilities because of the complete lack of controls and management at the facility. It’s not just that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing – it’s that the right hand and the left hand are completely cut off from each other with absolutely zero knowledge of who is doing what. 7. NIGHT OF THE WALKING [removed] If you think there is even a glimmer of hope of your loved one recovering at a facility like this, enter the night staff. By cutting the staff to a skeletal crew, the Brian Center at Mooresville ensures adequate care is impossible to give. These are some of the most neglectful and downright angry people on the planet. They’re pissed off and ready to go home at all hours. It’s called learned helplessness. When you’re in an environment where you can’t possibly win – you give up. You can expect staff members to chat it up at the nursing stations and generally ignore warning bells. For example, it is routine to hear in bed alarms for over an hour before patients get attention. Sleeping over at the center with your loved ones is worse than a park bench in Chicago as lights and alarm bells go off like the fourth of July with little to no response from the staff who has clearly experienced too many shotguns going off next to their ears. In another example, our loved one had her oxygen lines crimped and forcibly tied to the bed so that their head couldn’t physically move. 8. THE WAX [removed] Of course staying in bed and not moving is absolutely horrible for patient recovery. But somehow the Brian Center in Mooresville goes out of their