Heritage Senior Living

Some of the staff are great, many are not. As someone who formerly worked in a care facility, and as a family member of a current resident here, I find the way the staff communicates with (and fails to communicate with) family members, very unprofessional. The resident’s room is frequently dirty Some staff appear reluctant to help residents with personal care needs, resulting in residents sitting in wet/messy clothes. Laundry seems to be randomly dispersed among residents- despite labeled clothes, our family member often has their own clothing missing, and is dressed in other people’s clothes instead. Oh- and why plastic utensils at mealtimes?? IFyou can visit your loved one daily, and are willing and able to advocate for their needs, this MIGHT be an acceptable choice. Otherwise, keep looking for a place where the administration is willing to acknowledge and correct mistakes, and promotes an atmosphere of excellence among staff.

There are some great individual caregivers in Memory Care, and some not so great ones. Often understaffed. Basic needs not consistently met. Residents often only changed 2-4 times in 24 hours. No one warned us about all the different behaviors: yelling for hours on end, fighting, food stealing, residents roaming into other residents rooms, etc. It's a very chaotic atmosphere and stressful for residents, staff and families. Very little fresh or non processed foods or fruits. I never have a day where I feel my husband is getting the care he requires.

The people who are with the residents are very nice, but admin is disorganized big time. We paid for extra services that were not done. We finally got our money back for these services they didn't do. [names removed] are wonderful. The front desk girl is unfriendly to say the least. I thought there food was good and a variety. Lots of choices for beverages too.

Unfortunately, I could not recommend HERITAGE West Allis Memory Care to other families. While the facility is beautiful (very homey, wide hallways, warm wood-tone doors, charming decor in common areas, lovely outside patio), looks can be deceiving.At a minimum, I would expect that Mom be dressed in the morning; PJs on at night; Depends always dry; showers once a week; apartment smells clean. These things didn't happen. On too many occasions, when I arrived to visit Mom, her room smelled strongly of urine and her Depend was completely saturated and soaking through onto her armchair. The second time this happened I started to do closer surveillance with a Nannycam monitor. On many days, the care she received was very good. However, too frequently for my comfort, this was not the case. My perception was that the Memory Care unit was often short staffed, and while the caretakers intentions were good, there just weren't enough of them to meet the needs of their large Memory Care population. Follow through by senior staff when I expressed my concerns didn't seem to have much impact. I often wondered if the senior staff were just spread too thin, with 3 large communities to manage: Independent Living, Assisted Living and Memory Care. I moved Mom to another community, dedicated to exclusively to dementia/Memory Care, after only two months at Heritage West Allis Memory Care.

They have listened to our complaints. Looks good from outside but beware staff are not as friendly as outside looks. Picked because moms moms term care insure for sure covered it.

Overall mediocre to sub-par experience. Lovely facilities nice individual rooms a nice selection of activities. Large emphasis on resident independence only very little assistance and very understaffed. High rate of turnover. I would only recommend for someone looking for very, very minimal care.

I would tell other's, don't go here. We've had several bad experiences here. One time I went to visit my loved one, who has dementia, and they were sitting in the dining room with a plate of long spaghetti. It was not cut up and it was served with a spoon. My loved one has dementia and they tend to walk around. We saw that their toilet was leaking and it took them weeks to get back to us about it. We found out that the toilet was not leaking, but my loved one was urinating on the floor; they were missing the toilet due to issues with their vision. It still took them weeks to check on it, because their maintenance guy was out. They should have checked to see if the toilet was leaking right away. There was a puddle being tracked throughout the community. Not only is that a slip hazard, but it's also unhealthy. They're also supposed to do their laundry, including the bedding every week. I was sitting there when someone came to take the laundry and they only took the basket, but did not take linens, towels, or the sheets off the bed. They didn't do that right in front of me. Most of the staff were mostly on their cell phones as well. They responded to these issues with a brief email and nothing else. One time my loved one wasn't getting the medication(s) they were supposed to be getting. It wasn't a medication error, it was a missing medication. There was a person doing the pill/medication pass, they stopped the director as she was walking by and informed her. She acknowledged it and walked on. She didn't apologize and she didn't show a genuine interest in resolving our problems. After we told her we were going to leave, she just sent an email. She didn't ask if we could sit down and talk about it. She just said, "I know you've had some complaints recently about the toilet, is there anything else?" She didn't reach out any further than that. To receive that kind of response, for the cost we paid, was shocking.

They would not allow, my loved one to use the indoor pool. There was terrible communication with the doctors office. They increased care services costs unexpectedly, and without any notice, they attempted to take out additional funds from my bank account. I removed my loved one from this facility and would not recommend this place to anyone.

Our loved one is very unhappy there - all of the activities they were interested in were cancelled. Also they have continued to come into our loved ones room at a certain time after we have repeatedly told them if nothing is wrong to please come at a different time and it has not happened

Expensive and continually cutting corners to save $ at the expense of residents. Concerned about their convenience not the happiness of the residents. We have no complaints about 1 &2 shift nurses and cnas on 2nd floor. Other problems exist.

It has been a terrible experience for us. The main point is the community didn't assess my loved one correctly. They wouldn't take the long term insurance and they wouldn't take any claims because the community put her in independent living. My loved one never left their room. The staff seemed annoyed by the call button requests There is a lot of turnover. It is a new build for the community.

I would recommend speaking to multiple people to see if this is what your loved one needs. The community doesn't always follow instructions and at times the care was lacking.

I would want others to know when looking into Heritage Lake Country to not move your loved one in here at this time. They have a high turn over in staff, including the executive director. They had 2 changes this past year. Some of the CNAS were wonderful, some were horrible. There were a lot of problems with getting paperwork sorted out, they lost my moms paperwork for weeks. They were also out of a lot of over the counter medication, so my mom would be out of stuff for days. I am hoping the new director can turn it around, but we are not waiting around.

It's not too bad of a place if your loved one is fairly self-sufficient. But, when their health declines and they really need the assistance, good luck! Residents wait for up to 40 minutes for help after pressing their call button. I come and find my loved one still in pajamas with a soaked Depends at 11 AM in the morning, bed unmade and laundry undone. All of which we are paying dearly for. There appears to be a revolving door on the front of the building when it comes to staff. I have lost count of how many executive directors they have had in the last couple of years, not to mention other management positions. They have replaced the carpeting though, it looks great!

Mgmt tries to convince you they care but do NOT follow thru on the things they say they will do to correct issues!!!

There was a very strong smell of sewer gas (no doubt a dry trap/drain) in the model room they were showing us. Then the tour person also commented that sometimes that same smell was in the dining room below. I told her that we could fix it because that was a dry trap/drain and we ran water down all of the sinks and shower in that room. Voila—problem solved. And decent maintenance person should have figured that out. Obviously we got off on the wrong foot. The tour guide seemed nervous and ill prepared

This location does not seem to have their staff established yet for being a new property. For someone to have memory issues, like my grandparents, it can make it especially difficult. Management seemed to always be there, however the typical care team would change after about 5 days. It would make it frustrating for someone new to learn about their residents’ routine and medical needs all over again, especially when their residents’ memory is not like what it used to be. The appearance of the facility itself was clean; however my grandmother faced some issues with her personal cleanliness. Let’s just say they didn’t do her laundry or take out her trash not as often as they could. My grandmother would have soiled linens in her laundry basket for two days and my mother actually had to take that and wash it at home herself since the staff was not taking on top of it. We did report the incident, but again, the staff turnover just happened too often that the issue wasn’t necessarily resolved. There is also a cafeteria that the tenants can eat at. The staff team would knock on everyone’s door to let them know that it’s time for lunch. But because of my grandparent’s condition, they’re not able to move around as much as it would cause them pain. So only when everyone else has eaten their food, the staff would take up meals to my grandparents but it would obviously be cold by then. I would probably recommend this location to others, but it really depends on how much care you need. I would not recommend if you are one with memory issues.

My mom was there in both assisted living & memory care. Assisted living was great; memory care not! There is a seemingly constant change in staff, not enough supervision of staff and activities for the memory care residents lacking. It suffers from poor leadership although a new director seems to be making some positive changes! Dont be fooled by the beautiful building- they have a way to go yet. There are some amazing caregivers that do a great job, they just need to find a way to hire and keep them!

My mother isn't doing quite well since her move to this community. I do feel there is room for improvement with the care they provide. When I've brought up my concerns with the staff. The head nurse told me they are very understaffed . We will be moving her to a new community. She needs more care than they are able to provide.

Moving my father into assisted living did not go smoothly. There seems to be a real issue of accountability for providing care. It is a systems issue and not an issue of one or two employees. Also, someone with some dementia there is no system in place to orient and help that individual get used to the routine so they can feel very lost. That was my father's experience.