Madison Crossings

Lisa B

Jan. 26, 2023

Imagine you are a senior who is fully cognizant and independent, and you wake up every day inexplicably in an unfamiliar place where people you don't know do the following: say you need to take a shower now and inform you that they will be staying in the room while you do so; tell you that you're wrong when you bring up a concern you have; and tell you that you can't leave this place without a doctor's order. Would you respond calmly in these situations, or would they cause you confusion, worry, indignation, and agitation? That's just a taste of what my dad's experience was like at Madison Crossings. My dad has Alzheimers and now needs a memory care facility. He also has anosognosia, which means he is unaware of having any disability whatsoever, physical or cognitive. Anosognosia poses additional challenges to caring for a person with Alzheimers because the person doesn't realize that they no longer perform ADLs independently and therefore need prompting and supervision, yet such prompts and supervision must be delivered in a covert manner in order to preserve the person's dignity and avoid offending, upsetting, or angering them. One would assume that memory care facility directors and staff would utilize strategies such as therapeutic fibs and appropriate words and demeanor with dementia patients in their care, but that is not the case with Madison Crossings. In addition to not demonstrating such strategies, their (now former) memory care director exhibited extremely unprofessional and legally questionable behavior in the following instances: she was complicit in changing my father's medications without the knowledge or consent of our family; she argued with my dad about the accuracy of a complaint he came to her with (arguing with someone with dementia is pointless and only serves to agitate the person with dementia); during a conference call with our family about Dad, she was hostile and often interrupted and spoke over us when we were talking; and she outright lied about incidents involving our dad on many occasions, especially to create an inaccurate portrayal of him. I also had concerns about many (not all) other staff members, some of whom are on staff and some who are from an outside agency. During most of our visits, we rarely saw staff engaging with residents. On one of our visits with our dad, a female resident intruded and began telling Dad to get back to work, to which Dad told her to mind her own business and leave; the conversation got a bit heated, yet three staff members who were chatting together nearby didn't intervene to distract and remove the intrusive resident. It also didn't seem like many of the staff utilized strategies such as I mentioned above to de-escalate things when a resident becomes agitated or to notice patterns of behavior and intervene proactively to circumvent agitation. Another concern we had is that even though they publish an activity calendar, we saw very few activities during our visits and those were either BINGO or coloring pages. People with Alzheimer's need cognitive, social, and physical stimulation, yet during most of our visits we saw residents sitting in front of the TV or wandering the halls if they weren't in their rooms. Don't be swayed by the newness and hype of Madison Crossings. Our dad's two months there were a nightmare for him and all of us. I could write pages about the horrific ordeal we went through, but I'd be way over the character limit.