So far this year, mom's ended up in the hospital, then the rehab three times. I'm the only family member close by, so it falls on me to visit.
It may not seem like a lot but 2-4 hours a day is sometimes too much for me. I know she's lonely but she won't invite friends to visit. She does facetime with my sisters and when I don't get there I facetime her. I routinely stay in touch with the case worker or nurse so I know what's going on. I feel like there's not much I can do for her, except keep track of her progress and remind the facilities what meds she should not be on.
When your relative ends up in a hospital/rehab, do you visit every day?
Now that she has dementia, I would not like it but would try to get there every day because she can NOT lobby for herself or remember much of anything and will give them bad/no info.
Your mom has been in the hospital a LOT. Is she stabilized or do you expect this to probably continue?
Since you are keeping in touch with the staff and facetiming, I think you could pretty safely cut back on your visit frequency and/or length. Especially once things are leveling out.
If it were my FIL....sigh. I suppose it would depend on why he was in the hospital. If it was a short stay we would probably try to visit daily if possible but he lives an hour away and his nearest hospital is probably another 20 minutes further without traffic...so visiting daily means over 2 hours travel time for even less visitation time...with someone who is...unpleasant on his best days(long story short...FIL is an abusive narcissist). If it was life threatening we would visit daily. If not, probably every other day.
Rehab is another story. Generally his rehab stays (there is almost always a rehab stay if they admit him, luckily not every ER visit is followed by an admit as he is a frequent flyer) is at minimum 3 weeks, sometimes 6 weeks. Generally speaking we try to be there when he transports. They usually put him somewhere close to his home. BIL/SIL live with him. We will trade off. But they usually visit twice a week to pick up laundry and we visit once a week. When we visit he basically turns the TV up and barely engages with us. All we seem to do is spend time trying to encourage him to join in on things he won't do or participate more in his PT. and that is a lot of traveling for little benefit to anyone. So we just stopped trying to go more than once a week.
When hospitalizations were more serious, and challenging, I visited every day if possible. But I also didn't stay as long if I noticed eyelids closing and my relative beginning to nod off.
The family members can send cards instead of visiting. Cards can cheer up a patient, and I'm all for sending as many as someone can!
As to meds she shouldn't be taking, I would write a letter to the facility, ask the Administrator or DON to place it in the medical file so that it's available whenever someone checks the med list for delivery to your mother.
You mentioned rehab hospital; are you referring to one of the long term care hospitals, such as Select Specialty?