This is going to be long, but hopefully helpful. My mom has been in the pulmonary unit here since May 2016. We really have no choice about where to place her, since she is on a ventilator. Once a patient has run out of short-term care benefits and has to be in LTAC, there are only 8 or 9 facilities in the whole state that will take ventilators. This place is only an hour from our home in Plano. The next nearest is over 2 hours away and the rest are in the Houston area. If I am to be able to visit my mom with any frequency and monitor her care at all, this is the only facility that will do. The staff are relatively pleasant, and we have come to know and like a few of my mom's nurses pretty well. One problem I notice is that everyone is really uninformed about the patients. No one knows what is going on, and my questions are usually met with the answer, "I wasn't here that shift". Mostly, the staff seems a little confused that I'm even asking, which makes me wonder if other patients' families are at all interested in their loved ones' care. There have been several incidents with my mom that were very upsetting. She has a permanent urinary catheter, and so, is subject to frequent UTIs. She is also susceptible to pneumonia because of her trach. The accepted plan of care at Trinity seems to be "ignore symptoms and avoid any diagnostics until patient goes into distress, then send her to the hospital for 4-5 days". That happens about twice a month, consistently. Usually, it's after I have visited, pointed out that she looks very unwell and I'm afraid she has an infection. Almost invariably, she winds up in the hospital within 24 hours. Her urinary catheter was ordered to be changed every two weeks. The date is written on the bag. I saw the same bag with the same date and asked about it 3 times during the third and fourth weeks before it was finally changed. I told the nurses that my mom looked sick, dehydrated and sunken-eyed that evening. Sure enough, she ended up in the hospital later that night. Several months ago, my mom was still having therapy aimed at restoring her mobility and weaning her off of the ventilator. She was doing really well for a time, and had worked up to being able to stay off the ventilator for 12 hours at a time. One of her RTs took it upon himself to "stretch" her. He decided to leave her off of the vent for 36 hrs straight. By the end of it, my mom was struggling, coughing and vomiting, and begging him to put her back on the vent. He refused, telling her it was doctor's orders it was not. The RT that came on the next shift saw what trouble my mom was in, got her back on the ventilator and saved her life. My mom suffered a major setback and that was essentially the end of her weaning therapy. That RT mysteriously no longer works there. The latest incident took place yesterday. I received a call from a staff member, telling me my mom had CODED. She relayed this information in the same tone one would use to tell me my dry cleaning was ready. I said, "Wait, what? " "She coded. But she's breathing now. We're sending her to the hospital". She couldn't tell me anything more, she isn't my mom's nurse. The nurse couldn't come to the phone. She was busy with my mom and the EMTS. I waited a few minutes and tried to call back for an update. The phone just rang, with no answer, no recording, no voicemail. I continued to try for 45 minutes, then called the hospital. They said they did not have my mom. I again tried Trinity, and after 2 hours, decided to try my mom's cell phone. I was hoping a nurse would be in her room and hear it. No answer. 2 minutes later, I get a call from my mom's cell. My mom flagged down a passing aide and asked her to call me to say that she was ok, it was a mistake, she had NOT coded. I asked about the nurses or the EMTs, but the aide said no one was around. She didn't know anything. So this place essentially called to tell me that my mom had DIED, been revived and was going to the hospital, and then never bothered to call me back.
Concord Healthcare Group, the company that owns Trinity does not pay their bills. Any vendor providing service or contemplating doing business with this company should beware of this issue.
