Sarasota Memorial Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

Many very caring staff. I was very impressed with their skilled rehab for my father-in-law.

Terribly managed. Patients suffer waiting for the calls to be answered. Loud talking in the hallways all night. Impossible to sleep. Impossible to get help. What help they have complains all the time. Food is horrendous, ultra processed besides no taste and no fiber at all. Not good for healing. Fruit is scarce and they never offer snacks. Only reason I gave it 2 instead of 0 is the PT and OT people are good. SMH needs to fix this place or close it. I can’t believe my Dr sent me here. I will be complaining to him and the health commissioner too.

My great grandmother Mary DeLeo lived on the skilled nursing side for a few years before she passed away in 2016 but I’ll never forget the love and care that she received from this place. Thank you to everyone who took care of her.:)

I am hard pressed to give anyone 5 stars but you can’t give 4.5 and this facility definitely deserves a higher rating than they have here on Google.
I am the full time caregiver of my elderly dementia dad who is big and tall and wheelchair bound with a multitude of health issues. He came to SMHNR needing to recover from a very rough illness and hospital stay and regain his strength for future surgeries and to be able to continue to live with me.
I am very very picky and critical of facilities in general. In the past I have always had my dad discharged from respite stay and rehabs earlier than planned. Generally they are “ nursing home gateways in disguise” in my opinion, and do very little to help the patient regain strength, stay active and have the best chance of getting back home. Not true with Sarasota Memorial Hospital Nursing and Rehab!
Even in the midst of the COVID -19 crisis, they managed to give my dad excellent care. I was shocked at how often he was gotten out of bed, dressed and in his chair. The PT team was wonderful and actually showed up and exercised him. The food here is better than any facility I have ever been to, including very fancy nursing homes that relatives have been in. The CNAs here are very attentive and were passing by all the patient’s doorways frequently. Most staff seemed to really enjoy their jobs. I had excellent communication and support from the social worker, doctor and administration. I was not treated like an annoyance for wanting to be involved in my dad’s care. Whenever I came I was allowed to be a part of things. I was even asked by staff how I did things at home so they could continue to keep him in his routine.
That really blew me away!
Having a loved one in a facility is not easy. Nowadays everywhere is understaffed and people are overworked. If you are expecting a 5-star hotel in which your loved one is bathed and dressed and playing checkers every time you show up, that’s a little unrealistic. It’s a very hard job. Making the rounds just to keep patients safe, clean, medicated and fed takes a lot. I feel SMHNR went a whole lot further with my father and I am very appreciative. He is back home and returned to his original strength and health. Thank you SMHNR for your wonderful care and commitment and for helping ease my jaded mind for the first time in ages. You are Healthcare Heroes!

My mom was in hospice care for 2 weeks at this location. After reading the online reviews I was very concerned for my mom, but when I got to the facility it was a much different experience than I was prepared for. It was a positive experience from everyone including the nurses, CNAs and the staff who cleaned. They were all kind, warm and very helpful. I’m very thankful for this facility and its staff. Unfortunately, there was one employee, “Shirell”, who was very rude, unpleasant and “cold”. Luckily, the only interaction my family and I had with her was at the front door for checking in. Each time my family and I came to visit my mom she was very unpleasant, unwelcoming and rude. Otherwise, the rest of the staff was friendly, compassionate and empathetic.

Should a star be included when they have lost my mother? I mean I'm her POA. She lived with me and went to get her physical and mental right. Here it is my weekly conversation with her. That was 2 weeks ago with just the phone ringing and the hospital saying they don't even see her name.
So if any administrator is reading this im hoping this is where it stops before getting others involved.

Be very careful with this facility, they certainly do NOT provide end-end care.
Their non-medical staff is completely incompetent and don't know how to work with Medicare or coordinate squat. Terrible, garbled communications when there were communications at all. A lot of "that's not my job", and "I did what I was told".

My father, 91 years old, spent 4 months in and out of this facility. Nursing and Rehab staff were OK though we had incidents with bed sores (absolutely unforgivable and shameful) and a couple falls. My big gripe is with the Social services and Business offices. They gave us less than 2 weeks notice that Medicare coverage was running out. As stated on their form, this was the opinion of the facility, not Medicare. And who knows who "they" were, what they call Social Services of Business office, since they apparently don't talk to each other. When my count of days did not agree with their count of days, the Business office refused to submit costs to Medicare in case more days were covered.

So, the family scrambled to arrange Assisted Living. My father was discharged with a short supply of insulin and NONE of his other medications, and without a wheelchair.
Now, the facility claims to have legal grounds for these actions. But they NEVER INFORMED MY FATHER OR THE FAMILY.
Their communications were practically non-existent. They called Friday at 4: 00 pm to let us know that the wheelchair could not be provided when my Dad was flying out the next day. My Dad arrived with NO MEDS.
Think they could have covered this with us/the Assisted Living, ANYONE? Not so. Nurse says, I did what I was told, Social Services says, not my job. Was a daily struggle to work with this facility. Could not, of course, attempt face-face with COVID and remote comms a huge struggle.

First the good. If you must go to this rehab facility request Lauren or Jessica as your nurses. My 89yo mother had to go to rehab after badly breaking her right upper arm. She spent 3-4 days in the Sarasota memorial Hospital with no issues. She was transferred to the rehab facitility and the problems began. Confusion on her medication resulted in her not getting the proper amount to deal with her pain. My mother, I admit, can be difficult as she has started to suffer from Dementia and gets confused And then angry. Add in the fact that I could not visit her because of the virus and it was a difficult situation.

Lauren and Jessica treated her with compassion and was sympathetic to the situation. I would call them regularly and they were kind and gracious. On the other hand, avoid a nurse named Debra at all costs. I had the misfortune of getting her on the phone at 3: 45am one morning after i received a call from the hospital saying they could not locate my Mother. It was a mixup but i was frantic and this uncaring, rude and hostile nurse went on to tell me what a miserable patient and person my Mom was and then mocked and laughed at her Dementia issues while telling me how my mom was calling everyone in the facility, including her bosses bosses boss, which really seemed to irritate her. I finally stopped her and said I am her son and I don’t need to hear this and she hung up the phone in my ear. I called her supervisor twice in the following days, a lady named Jeannie, and never got a call back. Even though my Mother was scheduled to stay at the rehab for 4 weeks, I pulled her out 2 days later (one week in) as i feared for her well being because of this Debra (who I learned later that she was not even one of my Mom’s nurses.) Avoid her like the plague.trust me.

I did call the top person, Michael, and unlike Jeannie he returned my call. He listened to my complaints, was gracious and seemed sympathetic to my cause. Very high on Sarasota Memorial Hospital, not so much this place.

This place is an example of the rapacious health care system in the US. While I have no complaints at all about the nursing staff or their aids, the management is like dealing with absentee slum lords. First, there is the room, what they call “semi-private”: a medium sized bedroom with two beds side by side, the semi-privacy provided twixt the single beds by a thin polyester sheet the last 2 feet of which is fishnet. I guess the owners think that “privacy” means you can only see the outline of the other person, though you can hear them, watch (and often listen to) their tv with them, enjoy their family visits with them, listen to the “social worker” tell them that their insurance is running out and they’ll have to pay the full price themselves or get out. I put quotes around “social worker” because normally a person with that title tries to assist patients/clients, but in this case the “social workers” are just bill collectors who do not care at all for the person in the bed, they work for the profit of the facility and strive to maximize payments.

Depending on your roomie, you also get to experience any and all aspects of their bowel, bladder, nausea, senility, or respiratory issues with them since you two are practically sharing a king sized bed. Given that a lot of your fellow inmates are elderly, often with a degree of dementia, you can frequently be called upon to act as a volunteer nurses aid at night when the night staff is having a hootenanny in the break room and their guffaws and shouting to each other through the hallways drown out the calls of your confused and scared room mate who doesn’t know how to use the call button and so just shouts for his wife.

I got on well with many people working there but I would not recommend staying for any extended length of time. The nurses and particularly the nurses’ aids are attentive and caring but the facility demonstrates the worst of health care for profit.

I would give 10 stars if I could. This is the most amazing rehab I have ever experienced. The staff, level of care, food are incredible. Patients that come are not here under the best of circumstances but the staff, who all comment that they love their job here, make it a really special place to be. I would recommend SMH to anyone who wants the best of care on so many levels. If you are looking for a fantastic place to recover from surgery etc.make sure you end up here and you will not regret you choice for you, a family member or friend.