North Mountain Medical & Rehabilitation CenterReviews of northmountain.net

My sister needed nursing care and dialysis therefore we chose North mountain because they provide this medical service in house. At first I was not too impressed with the facility but after a few weeks and me being pro active with my sisters care I realized that the nurses, cna's, all staff work very hard. The majority of the healthcare staff are very caring and knowledgeable. They work with very ill patients and that is not easy. The executive staff for the most part was helpful with the legalities of the admission, paper work etc. Negative is the fact that the facility itself needs to be cleaned up better and the rooms updated/remodeled so that it does not feel so somber at times.

First off let me state that I only have a choice of 4-star or 5-star. I would actually use four and a half Stars if available. Finding a suitable rehab center or nursing home is very difficult in the United States. The New York Times just ran an article demonstrating how fraudulent the rating system may be in some. This was in early March 2021. From my personal experience I would confirm that using only that information is fraught with difficulty. Reading personal reviews on Google is also difficult because there is no way of evaluating how valid they are. Some are very praiseworthy and others accuse them of mean and harmful activities. After I left North Mountain the social worker there tried to help me find a new location which interestingly was owned by the same company which immediately raised a red flag but they were intent on moving me to a another facility immediately because I no longer needed dialysis and they wanted to open that bed up. They primarily we're taking people with tracheotomies or dialysis patients during this season of covid-19 winter. Because capacities were full in most of the better places I accepted her recommendation but I found it not to be exactly how she presented it. So consumer please research as well as you can and know that you are probably getting a distorted appraisal no matter where it came from. I tried to balance Google reviews and Medicare reviews but even that was difficult. Initially I found North Mountain by a lucky recommendation From a nursing friend of my sisters and it was actually most accurate. Also in their favor it was one of two facilities that had in house dialysis which made a huge difference and that you didn't have to travel for hours each week back and forth. That alone made them very special. There are many defects especially in this short-handed season that prevents rehab centers from fully expressing their best care. Even North Mountain was constantly short-handed and it definitely impacted patient care. Their dialysis treatment was exceptional and their wound care was exceptional. I was on a Renal Care diet and while it was not very tasty it was nutritionally sound and the palatability had a lot to do with the restrictions on my diet. I am sure that the regular diet had to be better. But it was not gross or disgusting like some Google reports said and when I considered food is medicine as a theory it was tolerable. The major problem I had was since they were short-handed sometimes it took inordinate lengthy times to get a CNA to attend to your needs for toilet care or other grooming reasons. That was distressing. I am sure during less stressful times in the community that it would be better. They also had a very good medical staff for nephrology, Internal Medicine, and wound care as well as respiratory. They were all much better than expected. They had good Social Service departments and activities departments. Because of covid-19 most of the time that I was there I was unable to use the gym for physical therapy which caused me a lot of problem later on. They did send out a physical therapy representative to your room four or five times a week for range of motion exercise but that was minimal and in the long run did not help me achieve my need of standing and walking. The nursing staff was mostly helpful and responsive but sometimes because of Staffing was difficult to get their attention. Considering the time during the pandemic that I was there all of those considerations that were problematic could have been eliminated when Staffing was more normal and perhaps then they would achieve five star rating. I didn't know I had it so good until I moved one step down to a facility that did not have dialysis. They had the same difficult Staffing issue, only worse! And the quality of care was not nearly as good. In comparison, North Mountain Rehab Center was extremely good and I would recommend it for anybody in need. My background was a pharmacist for 40 years.