MJHS Hospice and Palliative Care

MJHS hospice is the worst hospice in the world. My daughter was dying of metastatic malignant melanoma, and we chose MJHS. It was the worst experience of my life. I am an RN with over 50 years experience, and I am horrified by the lack of care, concern, follow up and responsibility. Having supplies delivered was a nightmare, ( she went without morphine because it was not delivered on time), having a hospital bed delivered was impossible. When she was in the last few hours of her life and having difficulty breathing when I reached out to the nurse on call, she told me to call back and let them know the time that she actually passed! No one came to help and support us at the most devastating time of our lives. Had I not been a nurse I cannot imagine how her spouse would have managed. I wanted to be her mother, not her hospice nurse during her last few days of her life. I could go on but it’s too painful. I would never ever recommend MJHS hospice to anyone. It was despicable. And despite letting the agency know how bad their care was, no one ever reached out to us after my daughters death to address these facts!!

My father-in-law was under Hospice care for about a year and they took great care of him my family and I had a great rapport with Nurse Janice and his social worker Arielle as well as the doctor who came to see him and the physical therapists that worked with him from time to time. They are all wonderful people who genuinely care about their jobs and the patients they care for each day. Now believe it or not my confusion/disbelief is for the life of me I don't understand someone came on behalf of MJHS to pick up we were told at first the oxygen tank that was at our home for my father-in-law and ended up also taking the wheel chair they also provided for him and those things were understandable, but the gentleman also took back the commode chair that he has been using for the past year and leaving him with just the grey bucket. Seriously!! His commode?? What are you going to do with that he has been using it for a year....you can't give that to someone else to use....will it be thrown away??? I am totally baffled by that move I would think you charged his insurance for it anyway so why take that back from him? I truly hope it was a mistake on that gentleman's behalf because it really made no sense at ALL!!

MJHS provided the essentials and resources we needed when my father was under home hospice care. We were fortunate to get experienced, compassionate nurses, attentive case manager and health aide that spoke Chinese and between us, main caregivers we were also able to communicate all the needs and concerns, everyone was helpful and compassionate.

I want to share my experience as the primary caregiver for my elderly mother, who was terminally ill with cancer. I owe a world of gratitude to MJHS at-home hospice. They became an invaluable resource for our family. I want to thank Rafael Arias for his compassionate and professional approach. He took the time to understand my mother's specific needs and developed a personalized care plan to address them. The caregivers assigned to us were highly trained, showed genuine care, and quickly connected with my mother. Their excellent home health care services have been of great support during this difficult time. I am grateful for the positive impact MJHS has had on our lives and would wholeheartedly recommend their services to anyone seeking trustworthy and compassionate care for their loved ones. J. Echevarria

Overall I would not recommend home hospice for a loved one if you have any other options. I found too much guesswork for a layman to have to figure out at a very stressful time. Describing symptoms and handing out powerful drugs is nerve wracking. As for our nurse and social worker they were two awesome caring and amazing women. I never got to use the aides as my husband passed within a week, but I can only guess that would have been another layer of stress. Way to much responsibility is placed on family who are unprepared and unskilled. The after hours phone call system is hit or miss. Some of the calls I made to them were awesome and helpful and others were less than caring. I was on hold forever when my husband passed while the "looked" for someone to pronounce him. That took 45 minutes. Guess he died at an inconvenient time.The chaplin was actually rude to me on the phone. Additionally an error on my husbands death cert took multiple calls to fix which held up his cremation. There really should be a better system to care for our elderly in the richest country in the world. Best of luck to you if you are looking into this.