Meridian Village Care Center

This is a review on Meridian's skilled nursing, not independent living or assisted living.

Meridian itself is one of the better facilities in the area. They do offer quite a lot of activities and the facility is well maintained. The skilled nursing portion of Meridian, however, has many opportunities for improvement.

My grandmother is a resident at Vintage Garden at Meridian. She has been there for over half a year. They are often short staffed with not enough nurses or CNA. Because they can't hire and keep enough nurses/CNAs, their staff often work overtime and double shifts. This leads to a general apathy, burn out, and "not my job" attitude amongst the workers. Residents often have to wait a long time before their call lights are answered. While this is a skilled nursing facility staffed with physicians and nurse practitioners, you rarely see the physicians and having them physically assess the resident when they are sick is apparently too much to ask. You're at the mercy of the nurse and their rigid protocols, but when the nurse is busy passing out medications and barely holding the fort down, you're lucky to get 5 minutes of her time in 8 hour shift. The nurses and CNAs also lack training on hand hygiene and infection control protocols. You rarely see them foaming their hands. News flash, you're suppose to foam your hand before and after using gloves, before and after contacting any patient and their environment. Also, you're suppose to vigorously wash your hands for 15 secs scrubbing all surfaces when you wash your hands with soap and water. It's no wonder that they currently have an influenza A outbreak and is being followed up by Illinois Department of Health. When you bring these concerns to their nursing supervisor, rather than coming up with an improvement plan, she tells you that this is not uncommon amongst nursing homes where the residents are elderly. If that's true, they have even more of a duty to make sure all their residents and staff get their flu shot and penumococcal vaccine! They should also isolate any resident having any symptoms of upper respiratory infection.

Luckily I live close by that I am able to keep an eye on my grandmother's care.

by Betty Lu, Jan 2017