Salude - The Art of Recovery

The staff were very helpful and caring. The facility overall is amazing!

My husband went to Salude The Art Of Recovery for rehab. It was really, really, very nice, but they have a lesser staff-to-patient ratio than the other place, so when he needed help, sometimes it took a little bit longer, around 5 to 10 minutes. The staff was great, really good, so no complaints, and it's a fairly new facility. It's three-stories I think, they encourage people to visit patients during COVID by going outside and talking to them through the window, or watching them in physical education through the window, so you're not cut off from the people that you care about. It's a very clean facility, everybody has a private room and their own bathroom, and they have a big physical therapy room. They bring the meals to your room.

UNSAFE PLACE!!! UNTRAINED STAFF. Unfortunately, we had a terrible experience with Salude with my father. They were negligent in his care: after being informed that it appeared that he was starting to be delusional due to a UTI and may try to get up and walk unassisted, Dee (the Exec. Dir.) notified us that they would be very aware, check on him regularly and ensure that he would not fall, as that would be their greatest concern. However, they failed him, he fell and has a serious brain injury due to their negligence. The staff is untrained and on numerous of our calls, the phone was never answered. Even our veterinarian can do better than that! When it was answered, the staff did not know how to transfer the calls (seriously). After expressing our concerns about his potential UTI and delusions, the night staff simply said, "Well, asked me how i was doing when i went in his room just now, so he seems fine to me" and refused to either go in his room to ask questions (to see if he might be getting the UTI delusional thinking) OR to even chart my concerns. As noted by Alex C., Dee is the worst exec. dir. i have ever had the displeasure of dealing with: no empathy, no compassion or empathy, and merely concerned about keeping her beds full. When i asked about his care, she simply said that i'd get a call once a week from the facility to update me on his condition. No one ever did the initial intake call: I had to call them to find out what was going on. When he fell, no one notified me from the facility; even though they had called me to check in the day before, they instead said that they had my incorrect phone number in their system, which was untrue, but just covering their backs. This is an inept place with uncaring people, and i would be terrified to have a relative in their so-called "care."

My wife was 63 when diagnosed at the beginning of 2019 with oral cancer. She had previously been successfully treated at MD Anderson Clinic in Houston 5 years before with a combination of surgery and stopping methotrexate, which she had taken for over 10 years to treat rheumatoid arthritis. The cancer returned according to drs we spoke with at Sloan Kettering in NYC when my wife went on HUMIRA last year. One poison essentially replaced another! She decided to stay in Atlanta for chemo and radiation st Emory Midtown, just to be home between treatments. She had to have a feeding tube placed in the stomach the last week of June because of the cancer being on the mouth. She has been living on that ever since. Between [date removed] and [date removed] she had 6 chemo treatments and 35 radiation treatments, and never lost weight or vomited once. By October she was at home full time with relatives supervising ingestion of liquid nutrient and morphine for pain in the mouth every 3 hours. I am blessed to have had adult daughters (2) adult brothers (2) and adult in laws (1) help me watch over her feedings and pain med delivery for almost 4 months so I could keep my job as a lawyer. Private nursing companies wanted $1300 a week not covered by Blue Cross or Medicare!) to do the same thing....Then tragedy struck. One of my wife’s artificial hips dislocated when she tried tying her shoe laces to go see her medical oncologist at Emory. EMS responded to our apartment and rushed her back to Emory for a closed hip reduction (manipulation of the ball back into the socket). The surgeon was not able to get the hip pieces to co-operate so an invasive surgery was scheduled for 48 hours later. That operation was successful but my wife now had oral inflammation from all the radiations producing a constant flow of mucous in the mouth, and a left leg being held together by staples from the hip surgery. My sister and I started looking at the places Emory listed on about 3 pages. Every decent place (North Fulton Hospital; the Glancy Center to name 2) wanted her to commit to finishing therapy in 14 days or less and to begin a regimen of 3 hours a day of PT when she could not even STAND! Then we found Salude. It looked like a perfect fit: stays frequently ran to 30 days and she could still receive the morphine for all the pain she was in. After waiting 3 weeks and speaking to their admissions people half a dozen times, they took her. She was transported there by ambulance and when I left her that night I finally slept through the night after a 3 month nightmare. Was I wrong! While the nurses were nice and the place was new and smelled good, the PA assigned to my wife was horrible. I have been a lawyer 41 years and my wife a Pharm D for the same, in Georgia and Florida. My wife and I were talked down to like we were cotton pickers. My wife’s morphine level was cut in half and the time between doses was doubled. We later found out it was cut even more by a dr who I never met, without him telling either me or my wife! The PT workers started to try and get her up even when she could not put any weight on her left leg, and had to be told to back off. By the end of the 3rd week my wife was so exhausted from the PT she looked pale, was lethargic, could not focus or respond to me when I visited her, and complained of a constant pain level of an 8-9. I asked the PA to give her antibiotics because she was gurgling when she slept and complained of a sore throat and had s fever. She refused. The next night it was the same only my wife looked worse. I got the same PA ([name removed]) on the phone and she actually said “we won’t give her any antibiotics unless we confirm she actually has pneumonia”(!!). I was stunned. To check for pneumonia they called in a subcontractor X ray tech who took X-rays of my wife’s chest and left the room telling me “Mr this place is really not that good”(!). I called the medical director himself to complain and he said no antibiotics unless the X-ray was positive (!). He said the results were ordered stat and 2 hours later I was handed a sheet saying she was all clear do she would get no antibiotics. I left the facility thinking all was covered. The next morning I called the nurse and was told my wife had passed the night well and there were no problems. By the time I arrived around an hour later the EMS truck was there and I was told my wife had in fact developed a fever of almost 101 and was being taken to Gwinnett Medical Center. The PA and all the nurses who entered the room were now wearing surgical masks and gloves. I followed the EMS truck to Gwinnett and my wife was put in triage and then given a private room. The ER dr was very sharp and ordered blood be drawn immediately. Forty minutes later he told me my wife had bad pneumonia and they were admitting her and giving her AVALOX by ZiV immediately. Her temp was 100.6. In 2 hours it dropped to 98.6 and after almost 3 weeks at GMC she is normal on her temp and vitals and able to sip water for the first time. PT starts today ([date removed]). We are hopeful she will be accepted later this week or next for inpatient medical rehab at North Fulton Hospital or Glancy, Aldo part of the Northside family. Forget Salude!! Fancy architecture and new furniture is no substitute for bedside manner and competency. My wife is alive because she left Salude in time to have real medicine brought to bear on her!

The management team and staff of Salude have provided an awesome and rewarding experience associated with my rehab and recovery. I am very appreciative of all their hard work and dedication. I feel very confident in stating that Salude is mastering "The Art of Recovery"!