Family Hospice - Altoona

Why does it take 2.5 weeks to get an answer if you do certain services in home, after being told we will keep you updated? It never happened, nurse missed an appt and I had to get a case manager to get a simple yes or no answer. Discharge is in order. I did not have contact with hospice so I have no opinion on that. OT is excellent!

The one star is only because I had to select one to post. My grandmother lived in a local Assisted Living Facility where she was admitted to UMPC Altoona's hospice services (Family Hospice) in June 2024. Her physical condition slowly declined, as it does when someone is on hospice, until it very quickly became evident that she was nearing her final days in February 2025. I have worked in long term care for 19 years & have countless experiences with dying & the hospice process. My parents arrived from out of state to find my grandmother very obviously nearing the end. The Assisted Living facility made no effort to reach back out to the hospice agency as the hospice nurse had evidently just been there the day prior & reported 'her vitals were good'. (Vital stats aren't the only indicator of the dying process!). My aunt & my parents had to reach out to hospice on their own, something no grieving family member should be responsible for when their loved one lives in a facility. When the weekend on call hospice nurse finally arrived she admitted she had never been in the facility before & didn't know how to go about getting the needed medications for the end-of-life process. Despite having hospice orders for all the usual end-of-life medications (Ativan, morphine, Hyoscyamine, etc) those medications were not actually on site and no one could find an initial comfort care kit either. The Assisted Living facility nurse tried to give my grandmother, who was unresponsive & was not eating/drinking in those final hours, crushed up Tylenol in applesauce just to try to get something in her system (another poor judgment call). The hospice nurse left around 11:00 pm with the promise that she 'didn't know how or when, but that medications would be arriving from a pharmacy soon.' Those medications never came & my grandmother died not less than two hours later suffocating on her own secretions, restless & struggling for air. It was the most horrific, painful way to pass away all at the hands of negligent hospice/Assisted Living facility oversight as well as an incompetent on call nurse who had no awareness of policies/procedures for her company or that specific community & also had poor bedside manner. The state was notified and the agency was found non-compliant in several areas regarding the lack of care of my grandmother. I would encourage anyone interested in using this company to do their due diligence and look at survey results (Pennsylvania Dept. of Health: Family Hospice). In fact, the agency was also found to be in non-compliance with their corrective plan of action regarding my grandmother's death in another survey more than four months later. This complaint does not even address the fact that her primary nurse failed to acknowledge or recognize the other changes that occur during a decline towards the end (changes in eating, skin, overall alertness, etc.) and also how that nurse failed to inform the family of any of those changes (which WERE being reported by facility staff to visiting family members). The primary reason to have your loved one receive hospice services is so that the person may die with dignity, peace and pain-free....a way of dying that was robbed from my grandmother due to the negligence of multiple people we entrusted with her care at the end of her life. Choose another agency.

The services are poorly managed and poorly organized. Apparently a case manager was assigned to my mother but we never met or talked to that person. Appointments for nursing services were not made in advance so it was difficult to organize personal schedules. PT did nothing on visits with my mother when I was not present … and the therapist was always late … one hour on one occasion. My overall assessment of the management of the home health services is that it is chaotic and disorganized. There don’t seem to be any solid management, planning or scheduling practices in place. I would not recommend using this agency if you have an alternative.