Enhabit Hospice - Austin

The caring and knowledgeable staff at Enhabit helped make the last year of our father’s life pleasant and happy. We always knew Daddy was in the best of hands and that he was safe and comfortable. During the last week of his life, we could not have asked for more compassion or kindness. We want to particularly thank Brandon Erickson for his extraordinary help and friendship to both our mom and dad over the past 10 years. We could not be more grateful.

My mother is in the late stages of Alzheimer's. After an ER visit where a doctor said he thought it violated his Hippocratic Oath to run so many tests on my mom when all she had was Alzheimer's, I started looking for a hospice company. Since Encompass was already doing Home Health for mom, I went with them. Gwen did the intake. I told her that mom was a very happy person and was doing pretty good, but that she did fall often and I hated having to constantly take her to the ER and put her through all this stress. She accepted mom as a client in May 2018. Mom did great on hospice. Not having to leave her Memory Care unit for every little medical issue was a huge stress reducer for both of us. The Encompass nursing staff and the chaplains were wonderful, especially Mia and Remington. They truly cared about my mom. I was thrilled. I recommended Encompass to other people in my mom's Memory Care facility. Less than two months later, they said mom was not declining and therefore no longer appropriate for hospice. I was in shock. I didn't even know a terminal, 83-year-old patient with Alzheimer's, a history of heart disease, wild blood pressure swings and several mini strokes, could be kicked out of hospice. She even had a big fall during that time period and had to rehab from the pain from the fall. They said I could appeal it, so I did. This happened four times in the next 10 weeks. I appealed and won every single one of these discharge notices. Three of them I won by default because they didn’t do the paperwork correctly. The fourth I won because there was insufficient evidence that she wasn’t declining. I was so relieved when I won the fourth one on the merits of my appeal, but then I received a call informing me that although I won my appeal and hospice service had to continue, the treating physician, Dr. Andrew Alpar, refused to treat my mother anymore because he felt she was not right for hospice. That’s right, after weeks of stress and forms and appeals, talking to different people at Encompass and being tossed around like a volleyball, the doctor just decides he’s not going to treat her. And apparently, he can do that according to the law. My mom and I have always been close and as the days and weeks pass by, I lose her a little more each day. They may not think she’s declining, but the fact that I have only five minutes of her attention a week if I’m lucky is sure as hell a decline for me. I have lost my mom in many ways already. Just a few weeks ago, she fell and was found slumped, unresponsive and drooling on a chair. Apparently, that doesn’t matter. I am the sole family member in charge of my parents (both have dementia; my dad is disabled and ill on top of the dementia). To make me go through all this only to slide the rug out from under my life is just not right. The only reason I gave Encompass two stars is because of Mia and Remington who deserved four stars. But the “system” at Encompass Hospice has let me and my mother down too many times. If you choose Encompass, get ready for a roller coaster ride, which is just what you need when you’re dealing with the impending death of your terminally ill loved one.