Spectrum Retirement

My tour of the Lombard Place Assisted Living went great. The staff was very friendly and helpful, they answered all of the questions I had. The place seemed clean and well maintained. The decision came down to location. Other than that this community was great.

The community overall had an institutional look. It was old and outdated. The layout was not that great. It had a hotel feel to it, long hallways to the rooms. There was a lot of residents and the place seemed a bit crowded, My loved one enjoys her privacy and quiet time and for her, this place was a bit loud. The room they showed us during our tour was redone, new paint and new carpet. The staff were al very friendly and answered all of my questions.

This community was nice, however I fell it was a little pricy for the services offered. The staff I met were nice and the community was clean.

This is a nice facility and there are some good people here. My mother is doing well, but my father has been in the hospital for a while now. It is a good looking facility, everything is pretty well-kept. The staff was very helpful when we needed some extra help. They did care for my parents well. There are nice activities offered for the residents. The food is nice, they enjoyed the meals. Some of the staff and caregivers really cared about my parents. I would recommend it.

Our mom moved into Cedar Lake shortly after it opened. After visiting other facilities, Cedar Lake was our choice for mom. It was clean, brand new and not as large as others. But what truly made our decision was the employees! I have found each of them caring, knowledgeable and sincerely helpful. I love how they know each residence name and any time I go to visit they know exactly where mom is. Our Mom is happy and you know when Mom is happy everyone is happy !

My husband is doing pretty well here at HIghPointe some things are better than others. It is a nice looking community never had any concerns with that. The meals are okay some meals are better then others. It has been an okay experience so far the staff has been kind and helpful to us with everything. This is a community that I would recommend to family and friends.

Rated care services lower than what I probably should have, but there is a problem with providing some service that was promised.

The activities they offered when my mom first moved it was more entertaining things and now it is shopping.

We toured here as we were looking for options. They were one of our "back up" places. They were okay, they looked good, and they would work, but we had a different first choice in mind.

Extremely clean, lovely community. I have considered Palmilla for my parents and still do. At the moment they can still manage on their own but when the time comes. Palmilla heads the list. I know the Director of nursing Patricia from her days at a another community and trust her completely. Care staff really do care and always have a friendly smile.

Caring kind staff.very attentive to residents & families needs. Trish director of nursing always available to address our concerns. Michelle greets everyone with a smile. Great food

I didn't like that one because it's very institutional looking. It’s like a hospital. It’s very grim and it's just looked like nobody was happy in there. I might have got them at a bad time but I just wasn't prepared to see that. That’s more severe care. That’s what a real nursing home is. It looked clean and everything but I guess it’s probably not Southview’s fault. It’s more my problem. Actually, that’s probably exactly the kind of place we need soon. I was just not prepared to see that. I am going to revisit Southview, now that I am thinking about it and now that I’m more accepting of what's happening with my mom. I need to go and look at it with new eyes.

Mountain Park Senior Living is a relatively new community, only 18 months old, so they have had a few growing pains. Overall, I would say they do a very good job of providing a wonderful environment for independent senior living. I have no experience with their Assisted Living or Memory Care units, so will not address those areas except as they impact the independent living residents. Mountain Park provides beautiful and functional common areas and comfortable apartments for their residents. They offer a wide-range of activities to engage residents. Many of these are simply groups of residents with common interests coming together, such as card groups, craft groups, book clubs. Others like movie nights, monthly mystery bus tours, day long trips to area attractions are organized by the activities, or fun department. Each resident has "lifeline" cord in their personal bathroom and one to wear. Within a 10 mile radius, they provide transportation for doctor appointments, church, grocery, drug and department stores on a scheduled basis. Special arrangements can also be made for personal errands within that 10 mile radius. There are a few issues to note when considering Mountain Park. If you are looking at an apartment on the second or third floor, please know that the elevator on the independent living side of the building has been out of service multiple times in the past few months, over entire weekends more than once. There is only one other elevator, located on the assisted living wing, meaning it is used extensively. This often causes long waits or people struggling with stairs that should be on the elevator! The most contentious issue seems to be the dining room, where residents have expressed many concerns from portion size to selection. Some selection issues are due to personal taste, others to medical issues affected by available choice, others to simple nutrition concerns. For example, a recent meal choice included sides of corn, pasta salad, potatoes, all starches, with no green vegetables available. I have personally been there when there were simply no entrees, except a salad were available for two people at my table. everything on the menu was either fried or loaded with sugars and/or sodium. One of the other concerns I have heard voiced more than once is they run out of items before service hours are half over, and often are out of them for several days. I was there once when they ran out of two of their "standard" salad dressings. I was told by a resident that they had been out of them for at least three days by then. My loved one says the quality of the food served is dependent on who is cooking. One comment I have heard from several residents is that they wish the woman, Linda, who runs the bistro had the supplies to make daily salads with fresh greens. They believe she is excellent and attempts to accommodate individual tastes, but has very limited resources to work with. Overall, I would say they do a good job and provide a fairly safe, friendly environment. They simply need to clear up the elevator and dining room issues to be an excellent facility.

Overall happy but also some significant challenges such as high staff turnover, inconsistent service and some issues with response time to emergency response system.

The food service there is very, very slow. I do not think this facility is a good fit for anyone who is under 70.

The price is competitive for the quality of the location. Living quarters and amenities. The community engagement, amenities and ability to go to stores is good. The management is very dysfunctional with high turnover. They are changing prices with minimal notification to the residents. The kitchen has had high turnover and the meals are below average to average.

The staff is very friendly and helpful, but they do appear understaffed. I feel the weakest link is the person that coordinates the care. facility is very nice. for the higher level of care I think more attention needs to be given and to help them socialize instead of just wheeling to an activity. they also need to take a different approach in getting residents that have dementia or something similar to get them to engage more in activities verses staying in their room

Overall experience - 3. While we were only there for a few weeks, the staff should have done more to help acclimate my mom or encourage her to adjust while she was there, especially in the beginning. We were paying for the highest level of care and even with that I still felt like I needed private caregivers to come in or I had to be there. This was because many of the caregivers, while friendly and skilled, spoke very limited English, which made it hard for my mom to communicate with them since she was hard of hearing. Usually, we could write on a whiteboard as an effective method of communication but 95% of the caregivers could not write in English so there was no truly effective way to communicate with my mom. Combine that with her memory issues and it was not a great experience for my mom. I also think it was a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering for the price. I believe that the marketing person, who I liked very much, and who really sold us on the community set my expectations too high. The longer we were there the more we made some relationships with the staff and we learned how to work around the limitations of care. As we adjusted I was able to appreciate the services that were provided a bit more and the efforts of the staff who were really good. Like anywhere there are some really good people and some not so great ones. I think that the basic needs care level was good but that the emotional, mental, and psychological care was a lot less than we expected from a place that claims to specialize in memory care. 2. Cleanliness - 4. Overall, things were kept quite clean. Sometimes the common area bathrooms were not kept as clean as I would have hoped but overall I was happy with the cleanliness of the place. 3. Friendliness - 4. Most of the caregivers and other staff were very friendly. There were a few that were not so that is why I am giving it a 4 instead of a 5. 4. Quality of Care - 3. I give it an overall 3 because I am evaluating it for basic needs care and emotional well-being care. The quality of care for basic needs was good. Getting my mom ready for bed, medication dispensed, etc. was usually sufficient and I would probably give it a 4 if the caregivers were able to communicate better with my mom. Their limited English combined with my mom’s hearing loss and memory issues made it confusing and scary because she had a hard time understanding what they wanted her to do. Also, we had a private caregiver there every weekday from 8am-12pm to shower my mom and get her dressed because Cedar Lake would only give her two showers per week, which was not enough for someone with some incontinence. Since we had the private caregiver during the week we asked to be put on the weekend shower schedule in the mornings and that did not always happen. Without the private caregiver there I have no idea how my mom would have managed to be honest. The emotional, mental, and psychological care was more like a 1-2. I just felt like my mom, especially with her hearing loss and memory loss, did not have her needs met in this area. 5. Staff - 4 As I mentioned above some of the staff were EXCELLENT and most of them were at least friendly and did their jobs effectively. Overall, the staff was great. I would probably have given this item a 5 if it wasn’t for their inability to communicate with my mom due to their limited English skills and her hearing loss. The last few days while my mom was dying I was there nearly around the clock and the staff was very caring and compassionate towards me. I was alone during this time and the staff and nurses that I interacted with all deserve a 10 for their efforts to make sure both me and my mom were well taken care of those last few days. 6. Food - 2. I was told by the marketing person that the residents in memory care would get a menu with pictures of food from which to choose at each meal - chef prepared, healthy balanced meals etc. etc. That was NOT the case. Instead, they had NO choice at all and instead got a weird mish-mash of whatever was left over from the assisted living side. Most of it didn’t make sense. It was like you could have turkey and mashed potatoes along with lasagna, and then a piece of cake on each plate or spaghetti, jello, mac & cheese, and a roast beef sandwich, again, all on the same plate. It was really odd and none of it seemed very healthy. The residents were also given the choice of two sodas or lemonade to drink. No water??? My mom doesn’t like soda and wanted water for most of her meals but that was considered an unusual request. My mom also liked to drink hot tea but that was only available in the morning and at no other meal even when she asked for it they would tell her she could only have it in the morning. 7. Activities - 2. I would have given this a 1 except for the Activities Director for the assisted living side, [name removed] , who really tried his best to do things with the memory care residents when he had time. The marketing director during her sales pitch made it sound like the memory care residents had a very active and vibrant activity schedule that kept their minds engaged. They did not. There was a daily and monthly schedule posted that sounded fabulous but it was almost never followed. We may have been there during a transition time between an activities director leaving and another starting but I was simply flabbergasted that most of the time the residents were sitting on couches or around the TV while the caregivers were on their phones. There were very limited activities while we were there. I was extremely disappointed by this and felt very misled. Most of the activities that actually took place my mom did not partake in because she could not hear what was being said and no one made any effort to help her. Her hearing loss was well known by the staff when we came to the community and we were assured that extra measures would be taken to ensure she could participate. That did not happen. 8. Value for the money - 3. I guess depending the specific care needs of the resident this might be a great place for some. For my mom, it was definitely not a great fit and just before she passed away I was seriously considering moving her into my house instead of staying at Cedar Lake. Again, I appreciated that they took care of her basic needs and there were many staff that I liked and appreciated, but overall I felt like it wasn’t worth the money. I believe that the marketing person set my expectations too high… a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering for the price. Many people I have talked to felt the same about different memory care communities where their parents lived so maybe this one was better than most but to me, it felt like it was a lot of money to spend for the care she received.

Lots of room for improvement. We have complained a lot. Things have gotten a little better but not too much. Big turnover of staff. They might not pay very good? You have to visit often to make sure your loved one is being taken care of well. We visit 3-4 times a week.

We live in one of the cottages and for what it costs more amenities should be available. Things such as meals and cleaning for example .