Alternate Solutions Home Health - Fairfax, Virginia

MaryBeth Jewell

We have nothing but praise for everyone at Alternate Solutions and for every person who has provided so much of their time and expertise to help my husband recover from reconstructive ankle surgery. He has received so much support, direction & encouragement from his PT & OT home visits with Frances and Mena and for Yuka's expert evaluations. These ladies are so respectful of our time and each one is very dependable too. We are so grateful for their help at a difficult time in our lives and we highly recommend them to everyone in need of competent and compassionate home health care.

Marianne L

This home health agency is dangerous. On multiple occasions they were suppose to send nurses out to visit my dad and didn’t. When we called them to report this, they said they would send another one out and didn’t. My dad needed critical medical supplies. They said they would bring them on Wednesday. They didn’t. My dad called and left a message. My dad called again on Friday and got ahold of someone who said they would bring it out. They didn’t. I called on Friday night and left a message and no one called me back. My dad called on Monday - the person said sorry they forgot about bringing them out and they would bring them out today. What?! It’s scary that this is the provider Fairfax hospital referred us to. They are going to cause someone’s death. The only bright spot is their physical therapist - who did show up. Do not use this home health company.

Lynn Agnew

I first contacted CNAP Caring Nurses Advocates For Patients (“CNAP”) 1/25 & spoke with Vina re: skilled nursing & home health assistance. There were no problems at this time, so I provided all personal data as requested. My physician emailed the documentation 3x times, the last on 2/6/24.

On the following dates I spoke with the following people:

1/25/24 VINA--explaining I needed a skilled nurse and CNA. I shared: surgery date, details and personal data as requested. No issues at this time. She provided her bosses name, MAHI, and said they would be in contact with me.
2/5/24/MAHI—I reached out to CNAP as they had not contacted me. Mahi said she didn’t know me and I never contacted their office. After explained I spoke with Vina 1/25/24 and what we discussed, she agreed I did contact CNAP. We discussed my upcoming surgery and CNAP had not received the doctors order. I immediately reached out to my doctor asking for the order to be fax again. I was concerned immediately from this point going forward.

2/6/24 MAHI--contacted me stating the following: ins. did not cover services, they were not under contract with UHC, then they were under contract, Dr. failed to provide letter (emailed 3 times), she said I just received the doctor orders and she wanted me to contact the provided line.

2/6/24 MIDE UHC--I did a 3-way with UHC, CNAP & myself as Mahi was extremely inconsistent with what she was saying, unorganized, unprofessional, . The minute UHC joined the line, Mahi changed her story. Mahi was argumentative, inconsistent with her retelling her story, then she said, "they might not have employees to fulfil the 4 week period," I terminated the call and services with CNAP as it was clear they could not provide services for 4 weeks as MAHI stated they could not be sure they would have a provider. MIDE UHC and I started to look for another provider.

The bottom line: CNAP wasted my time (2 days before surgery) and put me through an extremely stressful time because they could not provide services as they indicated. CNAP management of patients left me uncomfortable, so I read their reviews, which I wish I had done first. I strongly recommend before contacting CNAP, read the REVIEWS.

Charlotte Funnell

Please learn from our mistake and choose Avalon or one of the many other reputable home health companies in Northern Virginia. Do not let an Inova hospital or an Inova rehab facility pressure you into using Inova home health for your loved ones. You will regret it.

First, quality of care is incredibly poor. When they do show up - and you're lucky if it's 1/3 of the days they have you on their schedule - they don't stay for the entire session that they bill the insurance for. On one occasion, a physical therapist, who isn't licensed to touch meds, filled up the patient's pill box incorrectly (too much of a med one day, none the next, egregious errors). On another occasion, a nurse interrogated the patient and threatened to terminate care after the patient admitted to having fallen in the home.

Second, scheduling is terrible. We complained and were told that there's no way to schedule appointments more than 24 hours out. We were told from the outset that they had availability for PT, OT, and speech therapy. That wasn't true.

Speech: After the rehab doctor and rehab speech therapists recommended speech therapy for a full six months - after four strokes and resulting aphasia - Inova Home Health sent a speech therapist who spoke English as a second language to evaluate the patient. He determined no speech therapy was needed and declined to return. There is no appeals process and you do not have a social worker to re-evaluate your case.

PT/OT: We were told there would be 3 PT and 3 OT visits per week but never got more than one. They just don't show up. When they do come, they call the night before or the morning of to ask if you are free at a certain time, and if you aren't, too bad. They discontinued OT for the patient after two weeks, deeming him sufficiently better, when he was still unable to do basic household tasks (cooking, laundry, cleaning, managing meds) and required assistance for most others. We are still technically on the books, but we haven't seen a physical therapist in two weeks. (Despite the fact that the patient cannot walk unassisted.)

Amber Noll

This is not the place you want taking care of your family when they are sick and especially at the end stages of their life. My mother was dieing of sepsis and needing nurses regularly to visit to change her dressing and check her vitals and blood work and so forth. The nurses yelled at my mother lied about showing up to visit and when I let the supervisor know she assured me that we were the problem and she was going to do nothing to address the issue one nurse had my mother in tears after she came at 10 pm at night and was yelling at her to get her own dressing supplies and to hurry up so she could go home. Needless to say they made the last few weeks of my moms life very stressful as after we had many issues with the nurse not communicating properly about visits they dropped my mom as a patient with no notice for reasons based on lies. Everyone should be fired and or replaced. The supervisor who I believe is named Tammy should be ashamed of herself and should not work in this field. I honestly don’t know how she sleeps at night

Joel Mason

I had full knee replacement surgery at Inova Alexandra Hospital on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021 and was discharged on Jan. 29, 2021. During the discharge process, I was told that I would be contacted by Inova Home Health regarding my in home physical therapy. After not hearing anything from them I contacted them on Sunday, Jan.31, 2021. After a lengthy discussion, they finally decided to send a therapist to do an assessment on that Sunday. The therapist told me that he would be back on Monday. On Monday morning I contacted the office to find out at what time the therapist would arrive. I initially was put on hold for 10 minutes, and then was disconnected. I spent the next 50 minutes calling back and talking to a number of different people. Nobody could tell me when the therapist would arrive. I was told repeatedly that somebody would call me back with the information. Throughout the day I kept calling back because nobody returned my numerous calls. Later in the day I contacted an administrator, Kathleen Nesterick and explained my situation.

No reason was given to me as to why I couldn't find out when a therapist would visit me to provide physical therapy. I was finally told that someone would come on Tuesday, Feb 2. During my frustration on Monday, I arranged to have a different organization provide the therapy because I could not continue to go through the process I just went through.

After my experience with Inova Home Health I'm convinced that their entire system is broken and cannot be easily fixed. No single person is to blame for the lack of professionalism; it takes an entire group of people to be that irresponsible. The organization is very good at several things, however. They are especially good at not returning phone calls. Also, they all stick together and pass the buck onto somebody else. Nobody I talked to would take responsibility for not being able to tell me when a therapist would see me. Finally, they all have a very blase attitude and don't seem to care about solving the problem or addressing the issue.

Thao Quang

If only this site allowed the use of negative stars that would be their rating. Giving them one star is being far too kind for the service they provide. They are the most disorganized and incompetent ran business I have ever seen. Their "nurses," and I use that term very loosely, lack professionalism, skills, or any bedside manner for that matter. My bedridden mother was treated for bed sores. The nurse sent out by them, proceeded to scrub at the sores to make matters worse. When my mother screamed in pain, the nurse went on to say "What is the matter with her" in disgust. Complaints were made all the way to management where they seemed to take the matter very lightly as if there was no problem whatsoever. This would be the very essence of their business. They view the sick, as if, they were not human beings at all. We continued service with them hoping it was a fluke and just one bad nurse. Fast forward to present, my mother who is in the late stages of MS began losing her vision. Her doctor's office called Inova Home Health to coordinate at-home steroid infusions due to the covid19 situation and due to her at-risk health. A week had passed and there was no calls or resolution to the situation. After talking to multiple people from their office, their nurses, and liaisons, we were given the runaround. All the while, a patient of theirs was losing her vision more and more by the day. One person said the medication would come, one person said to wait, another person said it wasn't their responsibility to coordinate. After numerous pleas for resolution, their on-call nurse, again, "loose" terms, said "if she is that bad just take her to the ER!". We eventually had to work it out with the doctor's office to have her transported to an isolated area at the doctor's office for her infusion. Steer clear of this company if you have any true medical needs. I am appalled at the way they treat their patients and quite frankly surprised that they remain in business. There should be a lawsuit against them to protect other ailing patients from them and their nurses.

B Smons

The company name is actually Alternate Solutions Healthcare out of Dayton, Ohio. They claim to offer bath aide services. But due to high employee turnover, you may not get a bath aide to help you for weeks.