HEARTLAND HOSPICE SERVICES

My mom passed away very suddenly in February of 2025. My wife and I were shocked, devastated, and in need of support for my mom as she was no longer able to function normally. I can't say enough good things about Gabriela Santivanez and her team from Heartland for their amazing work in providing the needed support, answering questions, coordinating doctors, and guiding us through the process. Gabby thanks for caring so deeply about your work and being so amazing! 👏

Heartland took care of my grandfather and I cannot tell you how wonderful the nurses were also the HHA Rosie. Five stars hands down. When you need caring and compassion Heartland is there. Thank you Heartland Hospice my family could not have done it without you by our side.

As far as the delivery of the hospital bed, and the service of the man that offered to say a prayer over my uncle before his passing. (We declined, my uncle was not particularly religious, though the man told us he would be in his prayers then.) Those services were great. The bed was delivered so fast. (not picked up as we arranged, but eventually they came through. &that thoughtful man even brought us flowers the day after he passed. Very nice and much appreciated. Every other experience with Heartland Hospice left a lot to be desired. Communication was almost non existent. After he was put on hospice, the nurse came the first night to enroll him, that night I put him in the hospital bed and he didn't wake up the next day. We as a family had been fortunate enough before my uncle getting cancer to had never had any experience in what to expect from this process before. From the time when he was diagnosed in February to the end of May he had gotten very little sleep. Even with morphine the pain was usually too much for him to be able to lay down and get any willful sleep. He would usually just pass out sitting up for 20 minutes or so from exhaustion. So when he didn't wake up the next day, we didn't bother him. It was a nice change to see him getting good sleep. Did not get a call from Heartland the entire day, the following day i got a call from them and two cancelled visits at the last minute. The medication administrator called I figured she was the one supposed to visit so i asked her to come by. She did and informed me that he was not just asleep. He had already began the process of passing away. I informed her that i had been fortunate enough before this point to have not experienced anything like this first hand and didn't know what to expect. I feel that Heartland's staff should have been more involved and informative. Upon moving him, i realized he had soiled himself, again, did not expect that. I felt terrible that we had let him lay in his own waste not knowing what was going on. The nurse helped me get him cleaned and changed and then left. next day a nurse came once or twice, and the next day he passed away around 11:30am. As instructed, I called Heartland Hospice to inform them of his passing. A male nurse came in almost 2 and a half hours after he passed might i add, confirmed the death, and asked if I had any questions. I replied "yes.. what now?" He said, "did he have any final disposition arrangements?" I said, "no, he was only 60 years old and this whole thing happened really fast, so he didn't have the time or means to arrange anything." He said "well I have a list here of mortuaries you can call to arrange for one of them to come get him." I said, "well I will call around, but we will need a couple of days to get things arranged and the money rounded up. Can I call the coroner to come get him in the meantime?" His response was, "no. Since he was on hospice the coroner will not come out. That is the process." I was floored. How is this possible? A dead body is a biohazard? I immediately panicked and said I would be in touch and began rounding up stuff to take to the pawn shop to get the money together. Hitting road blocks one after another I finally called the coroner's office myself to confirm if the information the hospice nurse gave me was correct. It was not! The coroner came, took info for the report, and took his body to the county body storage. I cannot believe Heartland Hospice giving that information to the loved ones of their patients. Thanks for taking a bad situation and making it worse! If you're ever faced with the difficult decision of hospice for you or a loved one, I urge you to not use Heartland. Nobody should have the experience made worse by hospice like we did.

We used Heartland Hospice in 2021 when my Mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Neither my mother nor I had previous experience with hospice care, but we were assigned to Heartland Hospice through her health insurance provider, Kaiser Permanente. Nearly 2 years after my Mom's traumatic passing, I am beginning to realize that Heartland Hospice treated us terribly. I am inclined to suggest that Heartland Hospice was borderline negligent in my Mother's care, provided no services other than the ABSOLUTE bare-bones minimum to us, and that the individuals we were assigned were unprofessional. 1) Heartland Hospice did nothing to support our family (which was just me and my Mom): -On August 4th, 2021, in what became the last 2 weeks of my Mom's life, she out of nowhere became incoherent, delirious, and was inconsolable in her bed. She was agitated, upset, she couldn’t sleep. She was speaking in gibberish, her eyes rolling around in her hear. Something was VERY wrong. At one point she indicated that she needed to go to the bathroom, so I helped her up from bed, and as soon as we got into the hallway, she immediately began projectile vomiting black fluids everywhere. It was around 2 am. I immediately called the Heartland Hospice after-hours hotline and asked the nurse who was on call what to do. I asked the nurse to send a nurse to our home because I was home alone and didn’t know what was going on or what I should do. The nurse who I spoke with gave me 2 choices: she told me I could either take my mom to the emergency room or that I could give her some anti nausea medication. That's it. She didn’t offer to send a nurse over. She did not provide ANY helpful support and provided no guidance. She was not even empathetic or sympathetic. She told me she would reach out to our dedicated nurse, who doesn’t work during the nights, and that our nurse would check in with us when she was working again. That was literally it. She even thought it was appropriate to say, "Have a good night," prior to ending the phone call. I was left cleaning up black vomit with my mom who was suffering tremendously, cognitively and physically. 2) Heartland Hospice did the absolute BARE MINIMUM when it came to medically supporting my Mom: -The only thing Heartland Hospice did was have a nurse come to our sometimes to check my Mom's vitals and fill morphine prescriptions. That’s literally it. Our nurse did not administer the morphine or any other medication, she did not teach me how to administer the medication to my Mom when my Mom was no longer capable of taking care of herself. 3) Heartland Hospice was overall not empathetic or caring: -My Mom's assigned nurse would say she would come over at a certain time, and would ALWAYS be late. As in, an hour+ late. -The Heartland doctor who had to declare my Mom dead before I could call the funeral home to pick up her body was HOURS LATE. She blamed it on traffic, which is potentially understandable, but she was still almost 2 hours late. That whole time, my Mom was just lying on her hospital bed, dead. Do better, Heartland. -During the last 1.5 weeks of my Mom's life, she was mostly unconscious but in severe pain. I had to hire 3 outside/private nurses to help take care of her and to keep her on a medicine schedule because that kinda of care is not included in Heartlands idea of hospice care. Every several hours they would administer her morphine and an anti anxiety medication. Because of this, I guess I needed refills on morphine faster than usual (??) because when I called my Mom's hospice nurse to tell her we needed more morphine, she didn’t believe me. She was actually in shock, and made it seem like either me and/or the nurses I hired were doing something wrong and giving her too much. She was so much in shock and disbelief that she was hesitant to authorize refills. As if we were abusing the medication. ****Google is limiting characters in my review. Please read my FULL REVIEW on their Yelp Page.

If you have a loved one who is in need of hospice care please go elsewhere. There is a huge lack of communication between nurses, receptionists, managers, and pharmacists. You will be on the phone multiple times a day trying to get your family member the care, supplies, and medications they need. The lack of medical knowledge of the nurses (not knowing how to operate an oxygen machine, giving wrong bed sore cream, and much more) and having them push medications that do not work and making it extremely hard to get the medications you do need. We have had 3 different nurses and each one brought on new issues and all gave us different advice making it very confusing on trying to figure out what care my father actually needed. I'm very disappointed in the lack of care these employees have for their patients and I'm very happy my father has myself and other family members to advocate for him because these people would absolutely have made him more miserable than the painful cancer that he's currently dying from. I hope this review saves you from going down the same painful and heartbreaking road we have been going down.