Corporate Offices For Senior Care Companies Don't Want You To Find Them
I have noticed something very interesting. I had some concerns about a facility, and I wanted to reach out to corporate to express my concerns. So I got online and googled the company, but all I kept getting was the main website. I was finally able to see the corporate leaders with a nice photo and bio about them. What do you think was missing? No email address and actually, no contact information of any kind. That is very interesting. I called an 800 number on the main website and explained I had some concerns. I was told that they would put me through to the "reporting hotline" which is a call center where you leave your complaint and then they pass it up to corporate and to quote the woman I spoke with, "corporate will decide if they reach out to you about it".
So my concerns would be subjectively rated or reviewed by someone as to whether or not it was important enough to care about. What a disappointing message that is. Senior care facilities are in charge of caring for our loved ones and the top people don't want to be contacted and seem to only care about certain complaints; although I assume lawsuit type complaints would qualify. I noticed the same thing with hospice care companies. For one in particular, I used an email from a prior email to contact a corporate person on my own and my email was returned with a security blocking message indicating that email was not accessible to me.
It certainly gives off the feeling that corporate does not care all that much about what is going on in the day-to-day care of seniors, only what the bottom line is. What gets their attention is a letter or call from an attorney with the threat of a potential lawsuit. I have been complaining to my current facility about various concerns I have had for a while. Generally I would get a reply from the executive director that they will talk to the person or look into it. Sometimes I did not receive a reply back about my concern. Eventually, I received a call the other day about that same concern but all of sudden they wanted to know what happened specifically, etc. Apparently there must have been many other complaints and now they were choosing to act. Ultimately, the employee was suspended but interestingly enough is back working now.
If corporate does not start listening to the residents and their families they are going to continue to have lawsuits, poor care and a variety of issues within their facilities. They need to be more accessible if they want to know what is really happening and the presidents of senior care facility companies should show more concern about the actual people and the care they are providing for them. I will continue to fight for these things so I can improve things since we all have a very real possibility of being a resident in one of these places at some point in our life. Maybe corporate needs to be reminded of that.
