In our experience, this place has some serious communication issues. We took our son to West Pines last week, but left without admitting him after a truly disturbing phone conversation with one of the staff psychologists, who refused to listen and was insulting and irrelevant. Most of the staff that we met were pleasant and supportive, but the person that West Pines had answering the phone on Saturday tried to intimidate me (the mom) by telling me she has a PhD in Psychology and asking what my PhD is in. I actually have a PhD, although not in psychology, and when I told her so that infuriated her further and she refused to even listen to my question, interrupting me repeatedly, eventually putting me on hold and then apparently disconnecting the call. When I called back (remember I was trying to arrange detox care for a very sick young man) she said that she is a psychologist and therefore knew that I had hung up on her because I didn't like the answers I was getting. This is untrue, of course, because (a) I didn't hang up on her, and (b) she was not providing any answers, as she wouldn't even listen to what I was asking. The underlying issue was that we did not know whether our insurance had authorized our son's admission, and that was what I was calling to try to find out. I figured she was so nasty to me because the insurance had denied admission and that she thought I'd called to argue with her (or didn't care because the facility wasn't going to make any money from us), but a couple of days later I found out that in fact our insurance was willing to cover our son's detox care, but no one from West Pines (who had communicated with our insurance company to try to get the authorization) had told us so. Because our son had underlying medical issues, he was kept at Lutheran hospital as part of his intake process, and we were driven there by West Pines staff. No one at West Pines was concerned that this left me alone late at night wandering around this sprawling facility trying to find my car--they did not even offer me a map to help me get back. The next day the nurses at the hospital kept saying that someone from West Pines would arrive and be able to talk with us, but as the hospital prepared to discharge our son no one had yet materialized, which is why I called the West Pines phone number and got the staff psychologist who treated me so disturbingly. Perhaps West Pines' patient care is all right--we didn't get that far. But their concern and communication with family members, and with hospital staff, in our experience, leave quite a lot of room for improvement. It may well have been a blessing in disguise that they failed to tell us that our insurance had authorized treatment and would likely allow our son to be admitted, as I'm certain that he did not need to be spoken to in the way that I was; if the weekend psychologist with whom I spoke is representative of the clinical staff, I feel that we were far better off taking our son home to detox (although going against medical advice was very stressful) rather than leaving him in this facility with no witness to how he might be treated. Based on the example of arrogance and insensitivity we saw from the staff psychologist that West Pines entrusts with weekend duty, and her nasty and provocative instant psychoanalysis of me, an upset family member whom she had never met, I would have some serious concerns about leaving a vulnerable loved one alone in this facility. When I called on Monday to discuss this with the manager, she did at least listen, although I noticed that she did not ask if our son had survived detoxing at home (the good news is that he did) or express any other interest in his well being. My advice about this facility is to approach with caution, and if your patient complains that they were not listened to or were intimidated by clinical staff touting their (perhaps dubious) credentials, take the complaint seriously. Our experience suggests that this facility tolerates staff who behave in this way.
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