I have a mother in this facility since 2005. I was in and out of the facility regularly. I'm retired now but I have a professional background with regards to conducting quality reviews of similar kinds of facilities. If I had seen any serious concerns in this facility, I would have reported it to the SD County Ombudsman, the state licensing and Medicare. In the many times that I visited the facility I found the staff to be generally caring, contentious, and hardworking folks who treat our parents with respect and seem to understand their needs. They work long hours with little thanks. I know that I can sleep at night knowing that my elderly mother is safe and well tended. The administration does the best they can with limited resources and tight budgets. The care of the patients is their first priority. Staff contact and always include me for any medical or care concerns they have.

The conditions at Granite Hills Convalescent Hospital were really like a fourth-world country. It was so disgusting. I had to stand there and demand and not leave until somebody showed up to explain to me why these conditions weren't being fixed immediately. For instance, there's stuff on the walls, and all they said was that it's just an old community. But the way they run it and the way they go about utilizing that old place, it wasn't up to par with any standard I've ever seen. There's corrosion from the walls just being painted over, and I could really smell the mustiness and corrosion coming out of the wall. It was just nasty. The staff and many of practitioners are a little overworked, but the quality of care is top-notch for what they're able to provide. There's just a couple of them that have a bad vibe about them, they treat the residents below standard. The ward that my mother was in didn't seem to have any activities at all, but there were activities in the other part of the community. She's in a holding area for people with dementia and they can go out have a cigarette in the yard, but they can't leave that part of the place. Some people also wear bracelets with an alarm that goes off if they try to go through a door, and the door won't open for them.

My sister was at Granite Hills Convalescent Hospital for close to a year. The rooms were nice; there were two beds in each room. It was kept clean, and there were activities. There was movie day -- nothing perfect or exciting. She had been well cared for from what I saw. The dining area was good; they had to use 2 different rooms for the dining room, but it was no big deal. The food was the worst. My only objection with them was they put her in independent-living, and nobody notified me that they even moved her. I went to the place they moved her to. It had rained the night before, there were at least 3 or 4 inches of rain in her room, and her clothes were on a cardboard box floating. Her medications were on top of that, and she had been there 4 days and never taken her meds.