MorningStar Senior Living

I am thankful for them helping me and my mom and the situation we found ourselves in. Things have just gotten expensive .

Beautifil place for active petson. They promise the world to get you in then don't deliver on promised care. Waaay too expensive for what they give. If loved one is in a wheelchair, the room bathrooms are not set up for it. Too little staff. Hard to talk to management about issues. Promised transportation is unreliable. For the cost of the place, the service should be much better.

Morningstar is a very nice facility. My reason for doing so is they do the best they can. They offer daily activities, they keep the facility clean, employees are friendly and appear to do their jobs well, food is good and has variety. There are two areas that need to be improved: 1) There are two hallways that should have a CNA positioned closer to residents in case a resident needs assistance. There are no emergency pulls or bells, etc in residents' rooms should resident falls or needs help. 2) There needs to be more communication about resident medical needs with medical staff/CNAs and resident family members including an ongoing list of meds prescribed and meds deleted, plus updates from physical therapy.

MorningStar at Golden Ridge is poorly managed, but we have a great casita with an attached garage and the food is mostly good. The employees are stretched thin and over worked, but they mostly get the job done.

The Care Givers are wonderful. Security is an issue which has been improving. Nutrition is beginning to improve. Flavor is frequently lacking.

We toured MorningStar at Mountain Shadows during our search for a Memory Care facility for our loved one. The apartments at this facility were nice. Although, as a stranger to them, they didn't seem very helpful or warm towards us. We decided to keep searching.

I toured MorningStar Senior Living of Sparks during my search for an Independent Living facility for my loved one. I didn't like it as much because it had a large hotel feel to it that didn't seem personalized. Also, while I was waiting for my tour to begin, I watched how the front desk employees interacted with the residents and I wasn't impressed. Many of the residents were ignored when they were waiting to ask questions.

My Mother is not receiving the daily care that she requires even though it's not complicated. She also is eating food that is frozen and inadequate considering what we are paying. This is not expectable and is endangering her wellbeing and safety.

MorningStar of Hayward has been recently purchased and has been renovated. Many of the aspects (carpeting, walls, bathrooms, all fixtures) are fresh, new and very clean. On the Plus Side: The activities have been great. My parents have been getting involved with lots of different activities such as exercising, bingo, blackjack, etc. The food has been good for all of our visits, but my parents have said that a couple times they had to send food back. My dad gets his daily ice cream, so he is mostly happy. The laundry and housekeeping team is great. Two girls come by each week to change the sheets and take their laundry. The transportation has been working out well. They are getting rides to appointments when necessary. My sister grumbles at the work in trying to figure out issues (the bill, the Internet/WiFi) but she has so much freedom now and has had a great relief of the daily stress of taking care of my parents. The medical staff on the floors have been great. My parents are not fully "Assisted Living" but the medical staff has come by and provided assistance. They have been extremely helpful. On the Minus Side: The financial people there are rather hopeless. My sister has been working with them every month for the first few months to straighten out every bill. They have been doing things that are so wrong that a child could see their error. I think my sister finally talked to the top local administrator and figured out their errors. I think things have been better for the past month. They must be counting on a bunch of mindless people that will just write them checks every month without understanding what the costs are. The WIFI networking in the building has had issues for months now. The cable-TV is just straight broadcast cable, so I encouraged my sister to set them up with a streaming service that offers more programming. The down side is that the WIFI is so horrible that they have a hard time using the streaming service and it keeps disconnecting and causing other issues. They need to get some networking people in there to resolve the issues. As for Personnel, it's a little mixed. [name removed], the "salesperson" that convinced us to sign up, was nice and supportive when we were deciding but I think she only came by once or twice after my parents moved in. We had a MorningStar person come by the house before my parents moved in to "evaluate" my parents for the level of care they would need. My parents are on an "Assisted Living" floor but they don't really need any assistance at this time but they are on the right floor "to be ready" when they do need assistance and so that they do not need to move when they transition to actual "Assisted Living". The lady doing the evaluation at one point said "I don't even know what I am doing here if you don't need assistance". A rather *outrageous* comment for someone that is an ambassador of the company. Although the facility is being re-worked, there are still Security and Safety issues. Someone came in from outside and was roaming the building. This was very alarming. I am not sure how they fixed this but to say Security is lax is an understatement. My sister was able to pull into the underground parking (gated) only to find she could not get out of the parking area and into the building. Phones and instructions there did *not* work. She was starting to panic and soon her only recourse would have been to pull the fire alarm. Not a very good solution to the problem. Overall, I would recommend MorningStar. We have communicated to them that we will all be better off if we have more residents to drive down the costs and make them more profitable and help keep the price increases down. My parent's floor only has about 3-4 apartments occupied out of about 50-ish apartments on the floor. The other floors seem to have a lot of activity and a lot of occupied rooms. If I did recommend MorningStar, I would warn anyone that the accounting is horrible and that they would need to examine every bill, line by line to understand what the charges are. I would warn them to NOT set up any kind of automatic payment and to manually write checks or manually send payments after receiving any bills.

I am currently a resident at MorningStar Assisted Living and Memory Care of Santa Fe. This facility seemed good to me at first sight, however now I know different and I would not recommend this facility to others. The food here is awful. The staff are too few. The cost of this facility is too high for the value received for the resident. Overall, my experience has been okay but again I would not recommend this facility to others.

Staff members are very kind and engaging with residents and family at MorningStar Assisted Living and Memory Care at Arrowhead. However, the turnover of employees is concerning. Family and residents get very happy and comfortable with a staff member, then she leaves. The move in process was smooth and good. The cleanliness of the main family room area is very good. Housekeeping of my parents' room is not very good. There is a different cleaning staff every time and they just do basic surface cleaning. I always bring a bag of supplies and clean the toilet, bathroom and floors. Their laundry basket is always full. They often only have one bath towel available. Responsiveness of responsible staff has been poor. Initially, the food was not good quality and my parents were not eating. A few weeks later, the food improved and my parents were very happy. The staff said that a new chef began. I'm happy to see improvement in the food quality. It would be incredible if family can receive a weekly menu and document recommended changes. I've tried a couple times with the menu printed at the front desk and making notations, X's on foods my parents will not eat and then ask staff to provide the document with notations to the cooking staff. It worked twice with requested changes, but that was it. I'm guessing it was confusing for the cooking staff to see the handwritten notations all over their weekly menu. An emailed menu, with change recommendations, might be cleaner and easier for the cooking staff to understand. Activities in Memory Care are very sparse. The residents need to be physically engaged and invited to participate in different activities. Back to routines, musician on Thursdays at certain time, movie Wednesday with old Elvis movies, etc. Routine exercise and fitness is a big favorite, but also very sparse. If someone does not personally go and tell my parents they are invited to join, they will not, due to lack of understanding. The gentleman that did physical therapy with group chair exercises came in and gathered some residents to begin. My mom got very excited and the gentleman said he was sorry, but they did not take my parent's health insurance so he could not work with them. Unbelievable. We pay a high monthly rate for my parents' care. I understand that we moved in during a change of executive staff. I am still hopeful for improvements with structure and consistency.

My biggest concerns center around the cleanliness of the common areas & bedrooms & bathrooms (truly disgusting) and feeling that they are probably understaffed. Most of the staff are very friendly and helpful and nice. Hygiene and cleanliness of the residents can be inconsistent. Family needs to keep an eye on this and possibly follow up with administration if the resident isn't being kept clean. Further evidence that they are probably understaffed.

Staff was very nice. I was not impressed by the medical staff. In the six months my mother was there, there was a lot of turnover. If you or your loved one is self sufficient everything will be fine. If they're at all frail, you might consider a different venue.

They need to improve on the staff training, and following through with patient care.

We were so excited about Bear Creek being the best place for my dad but a few weeks into his stay, his care went downhill. Those who we came in contact with were wonderful. When my mom visited once a week, SHE would have to help my dad get shaved, showered, hair combed, figure out which towels, clothes were clean or dirty. Never ate with him so don't really know. We were told when we signed paperwork that residents were always busy. NOPE! They only had one activities director out 3 positions. That activities director rarely did anything with residents. DEFINITELY not worth the outrageous cost. We moved my dad from Bear Creek after only 2 months

The promise is not living up to the reality. There is consistent staffing issues. I had greater expectations, considering that my loved one is in memory care. The atmosphere and people are nice but they don't offer the quality of care that I need. They need consistent staff who are more well trained, to provide the level of care that my loved one needs.

It was a beautiful facility. They kept mom clean and cared for. Nice activities. Trouble with medication administration though. HUGE issue.

We really like that the staff take the residents out to the main area with the other assisted living residents to listen to the live music and even participate in the bingo and arts and crafts if they are able to. However with the constant staff changes and shift changes we feel at times it could be chaotic with trying to keep all the staff on the same page. We do think with the onboarding process they could get all the paperwork together better since it all can be so overwhelming and confusing

This was a beautiful and newer community. They wanted to place our loved one in memory care immediately and the family didn't fell that this is what our loved one would need. The off campus activities were limited to the number of spaces available in the van.

They don't help the residents, to get out, and be social. They should encourage people to do more. Overall, it is a wonderful facility.