An interview with Reagan Chakki, whose mother was helped by CHS during COVID-19
In December 2019, 67 year-old Kathleen Walsh suffered a brain injury while on holiday in Spain. She was treated in a Spanish hospital and after a month was discharged and her family in England flew her back to the UK. Once she was home, her family realised that she would need further treatment and rehabilitation, so took her to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where she was admitted. Her condition required specialist neuro rehabilitation and while she waited for a space in a rehabilitation centre to become available, Kathleen was transferred to her local hospital, Heartlands. She was there for two months.
Kathleen’s daughter Reagan said: “Mum was stuck in an acute setting that she didn’t need to be in, and she was deteriorating day by day.”
At the end of March 2020, Kathleen had still not been discharged from hospital and her family were becoming increasingly worried by the threat of Kathleen becoming infected with the coronavirus at the hospital. They knew that she needed to be discharged as soon as possible.
It was then that Reagan, Kathleen’s daughter, was put in touch with CHS Healthcare and was assigned to her adviser, Debbie, to help discharge Kathleen from hospital and find somewhere that would meet her immediate care needs.
Reagan said: “Debbie helped me get mum out of hospital, so she was safe and out of immediate danger of COVID. My conversation with Debbie was open and honest and dealt with my mum’s care needs. Debbie was just brilliant, not only did she keep me updated, she went over and beyond what she needed to do, and she made us feel like mum did count and she was important”.
Within two weeks, Debbie had arranged for Kathleen to be discharged from hospital and into a neuro rehabilitation centre in Northampton, where she can really start to recover from her accident.
Reagan says: “Mum’s doing really great. They have kept her safe and she has progressed cognitively.”
After Kathleen was discharged from hospital, Debbie continued to check in with Reagan and make sure that Kathleen was receiving all the right care she needed.
The support is appreciated by Reagan: “Debbie never gave up on us. She made it her goal to get her into the right setting.”
As originally seen on LinkedIn