Heritage Health Services in Port Washington is a horrible choice to send a loved one!! The quality of care given at that place is atrocious. Don't get me wrong, there are a couple good Nurses and CNA' s there, but they can only do so much. Sadly, their kindness cannot outweigh others lack of knowledge, their inability to preform BASIC caregiver tasks, amount of neglect, amount of disrespect they show the residents and family members, and overall pure ignorance. Long story short... My mom was discharged from Aurora Grafton to Heritage at 1pm Monday afternoon for a respite stay. The first problem we encountered is the "nurse" there didn’t know how to do basic catheter care. Such as how to properly irrigate a catheter and how to properly secure the catheter in a statlock(a device that helps prevent a catheter from being pulled out of someone). Basic cares a nurse should how to do in a skilled nursing facility. My mom is unable to move and reposition herself, due to her MS diagnosis. Since she is unable to move herself she is supposed to be turned every 2 hours. The nurse at Heritage was made aware of this. Before I left around 8pm Monday night, I positioned my mom so she was turned to her left side. I called her at 8am Tuesday morning to ask her how her night was, my mom says "I didn't sleep much, I hurt". I asked her why, and she says "I'm still on the same side you put me last night Bri". I was furious and immediately went to go get her out of there. My mom was left in the same position for over 12 hours. This is UNACCEPTABLE and I can only imagine how fast she would have deteriorated had I not gotten her out of there. If this is how they care for someone within the first day of them being there, I can only imagine what would have happened to my mom if she would have been there any longer. This place is dark, dreary, uninviting, outdated, reeks of urine, and staff is careless to the point where your loved one will only deteriorate at a faster pace than what is expected due to neglect.

My husband was in this facility for a little over 3 weeks for rehabilitation. For the first 11 days that he was here he never once received a shower and he suffers from incontinence. I had to go to the administrator and raise hell,because in my opinion that was blatant neglect. He of course waa given a shower within an hour of my bitching. I was told that it was an oversight and he was now on the shower schedule, which he was suppose to receive twice a week from there on. Needless to say he got on shower on a Saturday and then did not receive another one until 8 days later after i again had to bitch. They lost his laundry for almost 2 weeks, they were taking it down but never returning it because they never tagged it like they said they were going to. Both myself and my daughter contacted the administrator and never got a response from her. Pills were being passed by CNAs instead of med passers,they would put the pills on the tray and walk away, never knowing whether the resident had taken them or not. This place is severely understaffed and simple personal hygiene needs of the residents are not being met. These are just some of the complaints that I'm sharing, trust me there is more,but it pisses me off just thinking about it. After this experience i can tell you in all honesty that i would never think of sending my dogs there let alone a loved one. There are a few staff members that i will say were amazing and really busted their asses trying to take care of the resident as best they could when others choose to either not show up or just didn't follow through. The food was

My husband was at the Heritage Nursing and Rehab Center for six weeks, and I can't say enough about them. They were very, very good to him. We were going there for therapy to get him to walk, and to get his throat muscles back so that he could eat. He was on a feeding tube, so he could not take anything by mouth, which was difficult -- not even water, and he was doing pretty good with the exercises and trying to talk, and he was doing good with his walking. He had to have a walker, but he was doing pretty good until he took a turn for the worse. He shared a room with another man who had Parkinson's, so it got a little crowded from time to time because of the machinery that they needed. They needed a lift in order to get the other gentleman out of bed and get him in a wheelchair and stuff. So it wasn't that the rooms weren't spacious enough, it was just that between the wheelchairs and everything else that they had to use for both men, it became a little crowded and we had to keep moving the chairs out. But the nursing home itself, the help, the nurses, the doctor, everybody was super. I can't say enough about them.