Nursing Homes Community in Derry, New Hampshire

Anonymous

Birch Heights is a 4-story building with 125 people and one elevator. There have been numerous injuries of people trying to navigate into the one elevator particularly after meal times, where a 100 people give or take, are trying to go up 2 to 4 floors. Probably 50% of whom has some type of walking device, either an automatic or manual chair, a cart, crutches, or canes. The elevator can accommodate maybe 6 people, and when they all have carts it may accommodate 4 at the most. A couple of months ago, a woman had her foot broken by somebody with a motorized cart driving over her foot while she was in the elevator, and sent her to the hospital. While that was an uncommon incident, there were many other injury incidences that are common. The elevator breaks 6 to 8 times in a year. Three days ago, the elevator broke again, and it immobilized the 3 people that are in wheelchairs and most of the people that had carts because they couldn't get into an elevator to go up to the 3rd or 4th floor to get into their medications or to do whatever else they maybe wanted to do. This happens frequently in this facility, sometimes twice in a month, sometimes 3 months go by without it happening at all. The local management here has no control over policy that takes place, that's the big part of the problem. The staff is excellent; the management is terrible. The local people have no control over doing anything. They always have to check the corporate office. The local management tries very hard to accommodate the residents here, but they can't do anything. The elevator situation is borderline horrific. People are having broken bones by using the elevator. The local management is not the problem, it's the corporate management. When people can be easily injured in a facility even if other things like the quality of the food or the cleanliness of the building, those things become somewhat irrelevant when there's something that's very overwhelmingly wrong with what's going on.

Gloria

My visit with Birch Heights went very well. They're very good at what they're doing. It's a beautiful place. It was just too expensive. The staff was great. They had everything there. They had fantastic activities. They are very busy and kept everybody happy.

Jon

My parents will be moving into Birch Heights. They have a very welcoming staff, they made themselves available whenever we went there, and they made sure they were there to take us around. It seemed to be a very active and vibrant type of community. Some people were playing some game with a ball, and there are other scheduled activities like bingo. There's an activity director who is in charge. We’re just waiting for the movers to bring up the stuff from New York.

Darlene

We toured Birch Heights. The apartments were very nice and everybody was accommodating. They have lots of activities, they have a library, a game room, and a bistro where you can get coffee.

Halina

The staff at Birch Heights was very gracious and very accommodating. I really like the community's set-up. You don't have to make a permanent commitment with them and you are able to rent your quarters for a month at a time. However, they don't have any vacancies.