My grandmother was in the Iroquois Nursing Home in Jamesville and I must say they were GREAT. The always had different events for the residents and the nursing staff was always very friendly. She was there for almost 10 years before she passed away a couple of years ago and they were like family. I happened to see one of my grandmothers care givers in a store a couple of weeks ago and she still took the time to stop, say hello and to share another funny story about my grandmother.  They were great there and it really is to bad that all of our nursing home are not like that.  It is sad when our love one can no longer take care of themselves and in some cases like ours we were not able to help her at home.  I remember the day that my grandmother was admitted to the nursing home, she had mixed feeling but at the same time knew that it was the best. The following week she her spirts were so high and she was having so much fun, she had found some knew friends to play bingo with every week and started to learn how to make different crafts.
I would like to say thank you to the staff at Irquiois.    

My Husband was at Vivian Teal Howard  from July 26 through August 30th.

Once he was given his roommates methodone by mistake and they tried to cover it up.  I have his records to prove it.  He fell out of bed on the 30th of August when they were changing him at 6:45 AM.  He had a large bump on his head and a large gash on his arm.  They lied how it happened and at 10:30 AM, whern I arrived to pick him up to take him to his sons opening Senior football game, I realized he was not right and demanded that he had to go to the hospital.  It took 1 hour to get them to call an ambulance because "they had to get the paper work ready".  I told them I would call 911 myself if they did not do so now.

He died at 12:46AM on September 1st because of a massive stroke.  

I strongly recommend that whoever oversees this facility check for discrepancies in records.  The methodone incident in my husbands case was changed.  You can see how they glued over the original report.  Other reports were falsified.

During the day the care was great at Vivian Teal.  It was at night that my husband had problems.  The day staff, the PT and OT departments  were outstanding.  I hold the administration responsible.  I strongly feel they cut corners at night and it cost my husband his early passing.  

i have worked in 2 nursing homes in oswego and let me tell you what...most of the certified nurses aides are really mean to the residents...i personally think the worst one in oswego is pontiac...when i worked there they had a patient who was sitting in his wheel chair and fell over and hit his head...the nurses never checked him out...just lifted him back up and then put him in bed...never recorded it...3 days later he went to hospital and he broke his neck...needless to say it got reported to the state they came to do an investigation and the nurses on duty got fred cause she was found negligent...lost her license...thank god...me and my 2 sisters are CNA's and home health aides and our parents will NEVER be put in one...

If you have any comments on St. Camillus, please email me at
julie.america@yahoo.com

My uncle is there and I am not so sure this is a good place.

Thanks,
Julie

ps or  just give your opinion here of the place.

My dad stayed at St. Luke's in Oswego and I have to say his stay there was better than any stay he has had in any hospital.  The aides and nurses are so kind and gentle.  My dad was a big man and they were so gentle with him and never gave him a hard time about anything.  Even at night when my dad could not sleep, they would stop in and talk to him about what he was watching.  They would get him out and about in the wheel chair and they had so many activities for him to do. He was never left in his room or in the hallway.  I can't say enough about the care that he received from St. Luke's.  I was at peace going home each night knowing where he was and the care he was receiving.  When he died, many aides and nurses came to calling hours.

I believe that some nursing homes take advantage of the fact that the nurses can't leave the building if they don't have coverage to replace them and purposely have a low staff requiring the nurses to work a shift and a half or a double shift to make sure there is coverage to care for the patients. I wonder if hospitals do the same type of thing.

St Luke in Oswego is one of the best.
My sister was there and she was very
well taken care of.

The staff treated her with respect and
were very patient with her. Believe me,
she could be very demanding when she
wanted to be!

From the time she entered St Luke until
the day she passed on, we never had
any regrets in chosing St Luke as her
home. She loved it there also.

This is directed to Julie.america. I obtained my CNA license while enrolled in nursing school. I discovered that nursing was not suited for my personality, so I went on for my BS and became a chemist instead. While in school I worked at James Square, the Syracuse Home, St. Camillus and the Jewish Home as a CNA for an agency.
My conclusions are that CNAs in general are people that either have a passion for caring (hands on care) for people, or those that could not make a living doing anything else. Most have poor language skills, many (and I mean many) have drug, alcohol and nicotine addictions. One evening I sat in a room in which these women were discussing what types of antihistamines to give their children to "knock them out" so that they could enjoy smoking crack and pot with friends.
Most nursing homes have 2 aids to care for 20-30 of your grandparents every night. This is NOT the proper amount of staff when an entire floor is engrossed in bouts of virus (meaning vomitting).
My suggestion to anyone that has to place a loved one in any nursing home... visit daily. Be a pain in the butt to the charge nurses. (this is another area which is short staffed most of the time) Be observent, take notes. Take antibacterial wipes and clean the bathrooms, furnature, walls. At St. Camillus (or anywhere else) if the patient vomits, it is the aids job to wipe up the "chunks" and then some person will come up with a bucket and mop and swipe around for the rest. NOT the best of cleaning.
The best alternative is to stay at home as long as possible with a visiting nurse - or do it yourself.
Hope this helps.

Pontiac is the WORST Nursing Home in Oswego, NY.  The nurses and cna's are so mean.

My mom suffered a massive stroke in Aug. of 06. Since then she has been in St. Joseph's nursing home in Utica. My family had never had to deal with a nursing home prior to this happening. I have gained a lot of respect for this specific nursing home. Mom can be a handful, as she has lost the use of her right side and suffers from aphasia, so her communication isn't that great. 98% of those who deal with her are sweet, caring, respectful individuals. Not to say we haven't had a few issues since her placement, but after having 4or 5 family members call, the situation was always rectified.  I would suggest anyone with a loved one in a nursing home to visit as often as possible at different times. I live in Syracuse and get to Utica once or twice a week. My sister lives in Utica and she stops in almost daily. They know us and we know them. I think any nursing home situation is  going to have issues, but St. Joes in Utica has helped make an awful situation, a little easier to live with. I thank them.

I was employed my Loretto Health and rehabiliation Center and my father-in-law was a resident there.  He was transferred to the hospital where a physician assistant called me concerned about his overall care at Loretto.  I brought this to the attention of the Administrator of the Cunningham and he subsequently I was left go shortly thereafter.  My family and my family member had a horrible experience at this nursing home and I would never recommended it to any one.  The nurse aides were also stealing from my family member.  This facility needs to be looked at closer as well.  I would be extremely cautious and investigate the facility thoroughly before placing a loved one in this tupe of setting.  I will say I hear James Square is extremely good.

I am of the understanding that the former Administrator at Loretto was or is serving as a consultant at Vivan Teal Howard.  That might explain the last comments left by the last writer.  Is anyone looking and assesing this person.  I also had a horrible experience with Loretto.

A few comments about my experiences with local nursing homes.

Julie.     If possible, get your uncle out of St. Camillus.     Back in 2001, my father had a mild stroke.    After a short stay at St.Josephs Hospital, we had to make that decision as to what nursing home he would go to for rehab.    Not knowing anything about this, I made the choice to get him into St. Camillus.    Based on what I had heard about this facility, it seemed like a great place with above average care.
      The second I walked through the doors with my father in a wheel chair, I knew there was a problem.      The smell of urine, ammonia and other unknown odors were heavily prevalant anywhere in the building other than the reception area.
   Once we got to his room, more bad vibes were happening.It looked like an army barrack from WWII.   Depressing, dark and not as clean as you'd think a patients room should be.
  From there, it was all down hill.    In the 4 days he was there before I personally removed him, he did not get 15 minutes of physical therapy.   He was never clean when I got there.   He was not fed on a regular schedule and was left in his room, alone for hours at a time with no checks by the staff.
   When I told the administration that I would be bringing him to another facility, they told me I couldn't remove him.     I proved them wrong and got him into Birchwood where he was treated like gold and recovered nicely from the stroke.
 On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate St. Camillus a -5

A few years later, my father had knee replacement surgery.   Knowing now what the system was like, we chose Birchwood again.  His care there was impeccable and the physical therapy dept was the best I had seen and this was after making visits to several other facilities in CNY.   My father was back on his feet and back to normal in less than 3 weeks.   He hasn't had one problem with that knee replacement and the credit goes to the Birchwood staff.
  Round 2 was different.   The following year, he had a total knee replacement on the other leg.  When we found out that Birchwood had no rooms available, we had to decide from a list of other facilities.     Seeing how St.Josephs was affiliated with Loretto, we chose that facility to rehab his knee replacement.      Once again, the gloom and doom situation hit us the minute we walked through the doors.    The kitchen facility was filthy, we witnessed food service workers wiping the sweat from their heads with the rubber gloves on and then picking up pieces of cake and other food to put it on the patients dishes.   Patients in the hallways covered in urine, food and other dirt.   Once again,the rooms were dismal at best.   A dresser that looked like it was pulled from a dumpster and an ols hospital bed that was most likely outdated.    Nothing else in the rooms to brighten up the spirits of a short term rehab patient.   That's the one thing Birchwood always had.    A bright atmosphere with a lot of smiling people, pictures on the walls, nice furniture etc.!     Needless to say, I pulled my father out of Loretto after 3 days when they did absolutely nothing with his knee .    The first few days after surgery are the most important to get the proper therapy and stretch the leg so it heals properly.    I took my father home and did his therapy there until Birchwood had a room but the damage was already done by Loretto not doing their job.

  The story doesn't end there.    Last fall 10 - 06, my father banged his knee pretty hard and even though there was nothing broken,his confidence was lost in his ability to walk.    Ring up short term rehab again !   Same scenario.....Birchwood had no rooms so we took him to "The Crossing" in Minoa.    It seemed like a nice place and the staff was great at admission time.     The first day I arrived to visit my father, he was drooling all over himself while sitting in a wheelchair.    The nurse said he was in pain so they shot him up with some strong narcotic which turned him into a lump of flesh and bone.
  I told them that my father had no pain and was very aggressive in the therapy room yet they did nothing for him the first 5 days he was there.  Each day, they said he was in pain and shot him up with medication.   While at therapy,if my father even mentioned that his knee was sore, they shot him up and brought him back to his room which he shared with a severely ill gentleman in his 90's.
   It seemed that there was no separation of short term rehab patients, long term and terminal patients.     Again, not a good thing for short term rehab patient to witness and  endure.
 Although the decor and surroundings were nice, the place was a joke.     It almost took a lawsuit to get my father out of their.  They wouldn't let me take him until I proved to them that I was his health care proxy.    They were like the Gestapo !
 I took my father home and continued his therapy there where he was back walking with his cane in two days once the drugs wore
off.

  Right now, my father is in Iroquois Nursing home for yet another short term rehab stint.     Although the building is very nice and the staff who actually takes care of the patients are great, the administration, social workers and Doctor are low on the list in their fields.      We've been repeatedly lied to since a progress meeting on Nov 20th where it was agreed that my father would be taken off of the insulin they were giving him.    He never used insulin at home.  It was always oral medication which we controlled his very mild diabetes with.    The charge nurses and administration agrred that day to remove the insulin from his menu of medications.
  Behind our backs, they continued to give him shot after shot which made my father ill.  They tried to blame it on the food but I had been through this once before when he was given insulin in the hospital.    The people at Iroquois do not believe family members or myself (his health care proxy) when we tell anything about my fathers medical history and what insulin does to him.     All they did was pass the buck from one administrator to another until finally they passed it to the doctor.    Dr. Charles Lockwood.       This guy wouldn't make a good vet at the SPCA.
   He refused to eliminate the insulin from my fathers daily meds and sarcastically made reference to my vast knowledge of medicine while I was talking with him on the phone.  He also hung up on me when I told him he had to eliminate the insulin based on NYS Health care proxy law.    I called back and his nurse said he had nothing to say to me.     Back at Iroquois, the head nurses kept on lying and passing the buck.      This morning, we found that they were still giving my father the insulin.    We asked why and the nurse said it was out of her hands and that we'd have to talk to the head administrator in the morning.     Total run around and lack of respect for the patient and the laws of New York.  All involved will be dealt with legally.

 If anyone else has any information pertaining to Iroquois Nursing home and their inability to follow the laws, please respond.
 Thanks God, my father is coming home this coming Thursday even though his occupational and physical therapy treatments there were sub par and didn't prepare him to come home.   He'll go to out patient therapy after he gets home.

  I never wanted to believe the horror stories I heard about these nursing homes but after having experienced several of them in recent years, all I can says is "Caveat Emptor"     Let the buyer beware   !!

St. Camillus is a piece of crap. I wouldn't want to see anymore there. Lying staff, neglect of patients and stuff stolen and or missing from patient's rooms.

Thanks a lot for all your help State of New York.  You have determined that these places are sub-standard so you change from once a year inspections to twice a year.  I bet that puts real fear in the operators of these homes.
When you are ready to be released from the hospital and need additional care the state requires that you go to the first available nursing home within 50 miles.  Guess who is most likely to have a room available.  They call them sub-standard, force you to go there and then do very little to make them improve their services.  How would you like to be in one of these homes waiting for the next inspection and hoping you will live that long?

CAYUGA COUNTY NURSING HOME HAS BEEN A RELIEF FOR US. THEY ARE PROFESSIONAL AND VERY CARING. THEY TREAT YOU LIKE FAMILY AND HAVE BEEN A BEST FRIEND TO MY MOTHER. WE WOULD LIKE TO THINK NOTHING EVER GOES WRONG BUT NO ONE IS PERFECT BUT THET TRY TO BE!!!

CAYUGA COUNTY NURSING HOME HAS BEEN A RELIEF FOR US. THEY ARE PROFESSIONAL AND VERY CARING. THEY TREAT YOU LIKE FAMILY AND HAVE BEEN A BEST FRIEND TO MY MOTHER. WE WOULD LIKE TO THINK NOTHING EVER GOES WRONG BUT NO ONE IS PERFECT BUT THET TRY TO BE!!!

TO Fret Junkey...If anyone else has any information pertaining to Iroquois Nursing home and their inability to follow the laws, please respond.



I had a family member in Iroquois a couple of years ago and I have a close friend who father is there now and I must say I have no idea why you are having such problems...I never had any issues with them and my friend said that she has not either. The nurse's (including the head nurse) are only following Doctors orders and you father's doctor should know his history and I may be mistaken but I do not think the nurse can give certain drug to a patients with out a doctors order. I myself have a mild case of diabetes and up to 2 month ago have only taken oral meds now I have to take insulin and at first it would make me feel sick. I am truly sorry that your father has had so many problems I can not say anything about the other nursing home that you mention except for Birchwood which I agree with you they are great there. I do hope that you opened your mouth for the patients in those nursing home in which you saw for yourself were sitting in urine and dirt so that maybe something would be done for them. Hope all turns out well for your dad.

Reply about someone asking about Iroquois Nursing Home. I know a man whose wife is there. He has been very unhappy with the place. Went to visit her and she was sitting in a wet 'diaper' and it was very wet. Asked why and an aide told him, "we are short staffed". There are laws against providing sub standard care and if they are too short staffed to provide adequate care, something is wrong. The doctor there also cut off most of his wife's medications that she was on when she went in and husband was most unhappy about that as well.

A friend of mine has a father at St. Camillus and he says it is one problem after another. I am surprised because I thought the place had a good reputation. My friend is very unhappy with the place. That is all I can say.

SORRY.
             Like I mentioned before, the CNA's and the other workers at Iroquois are great.   My problem was with the charge nurses, administration, social service worker (who I found out is no longer with them) and the doctor.   By the way, I made a mistake.  It's Dr. Richard Lockwood and not Charles Lockwood.  Got a little confused with the former SU Lacrosse player.
  Yesterday, we spoke to some top officials at the NYS health dept and from the information that they put in front of us, the people who've been giving us trouble at Iroquois are dead wrong.      After the conversation with the health dept, we also found that St.Josephs hospital sent a list of what they diagnosed my father with to Iroquois.  On that list were conditions that were NOT present.    Come to find out, the hospital gets paid (as does the nursing homes) for each diagnosis that they come up with.   This led the doctor at Iroquois to administer drugs to my father for conditions that he did not have.   We'd been trying to explain this to the staff and doctor but they treated us like we were little kids.   Totally uninterested in what we had to say about my fathers medical history.
 Now for the second time in two weeks, they had to cancel my fathers dentist appointment because they forgot to take him off of the blood thinners soon enough.         These people are incompetent to say the least.
 I have to give credit to the CNA's and other staff for putting up with these people the way they do.     They all seem to know that there's some bad stuff happening at Iroquois but their jobs would be in jeopardy if they spoke out.


SID.
        I agree.. There's no excuse for being short staffed in this town.    It seems that every time I walk in the door at Iroquois, there are people filling applications and potential CNA/nurses being interviewed.   Bottom line is the money !    Someone is getting rich while many of these seniors are getting sub par care.   They should also spend a few more dollars on the food service.   It's horrendous !
  When my father was admitted to Iroquois on 11-07-07, he had a problem with wetting himself due to the dimensia that the urinary track infection brought on.     Although I totally believe what you said about the women who was sitting in a wet diaper for extended periods, whenever my father had an accident, they were on him immediately when he rang for them.    They'd bring him right down and shower him.   It impressed me as I've seen the other side of the spectrum at other facilities.

Re: Iroquois N.H.
You are correct, Fret and Sid. Someone is getting rich and it's not the cna's or the nurses. I cannot speak out because I do not want to lose my job, but I would like to ask a favor of you. Please write to the Board of Directors for the nursing home. I know that one of them is at Crouse Hospital and I think they might be very interested in what you have to say. Please be the voice for us, but above all, the residents that can't be heard.Thank you.

Everything stated above about Iroquois Nursing home is true...They have wonderful and caring staff. The true problem is in administration. This once "great" nursing home is in a state of decline. While it would appear that everything is bright and shiny, in this case it is very true that everything that glitters is not gold. This is a not-for-profit organization and as such gains some of it's money through donations as well as through medicare and medicaid reimbursment through therapies. This money should be reinvested into new equipment and continuing education of staff so that they can continue to take care of the residents of the facility in the best way possible. However this is not the case. This money is instead invested in new furniture for comman areas as well as pictures and other non-necessaties so as to provide those that come to tour with the impression of a wonderful place. The staff is constantly shorthanded and underpayed when compared to other local nursing homes...instead of investing the "profits" gained in their current employees and in gaining additional employees they determined that it would be more cost efficent to have aides and nurses work double shifts and burn them out. Again the quality of care at Iroquois Nursing home is above average in the area but this will not be the case much longer if things are allowed to continue on this path. I agree with jane doe, until the board of directors is made aware of this situation it will only continue to decline and that will leave one less place for our loved ones to spend their remaining days or to rehab from injury.

There are a lot of changes going on in Iroquois and I heard that as soon as the nursing director left a few months ago, everything started going downhill. She was very supportive of the staff there, but now it's all about the money,as Unknown just said. The residents are not allowed to have a t.v. except in their rooms, and during the holidays, no one was even allowed to bring a plate of cookies to their loved ones. The rule still stands.
My friend said she was told to leave them in the staff cafeteria where "everyone could enjoy them." Is there a new law that doesn't allow food to be brought to their family members in nursing homes? If so, please post a link to it on this blog, so others will know about it.
I heard that the employees want a union in there. I don't know if it's true, but if it is, maybe that is just what it will take to get some changes made. If the workers are paid better, they can get more staff and that means better care for the patients.