Vitality Living

Brookdale of Arlington is situated in the center of bustling city life, traffic, and confusion. Positives: Brookdale evaluated my brother first and did call to state they would not be able to take him before our appointment. Negatives: no parking, attitudes by employees was distributed while employees were outside the building and not visible as far as they knew. Lobby looks and seems like a busy hotel lobby of a 2 star hotel. Email sent from Brookdale that refusing my brother was only the second person they had ever refused. I know they will be glad to know that in his new community he is functioning without issue and they are correct, it is the atmosphere and staff that make the difference.

My mother has been living in the Safe Haven, one of three units in the Memory Care division for a little while now. The CARE STAFF is the only thing that I can rate 5 stars (Evelyne, Ana, Katlyn and Ednie KUDOS TO YOU LADIES, THANKYOU FOR MAKING MY MOTHER APART OF YOUR FAMILY!) My mother currently pays a whopping $5300 with a scheduled rate increase of $1000 at the beginning of the 2016 year. I often get charged a great deal of money every month for wipes and depends. There is absolutely no way that my mother is going through 10+ packs of depends and 13+ packs of wipes EVERY MONTH. Neither of the two ladies in charge are pleasant nor can directly answer Any of your concerns.... And that's when you can find them. I had came in one day not too long ago to sign an assessment and after waiting over 45 mins to speak with the LG Director, I stepped out to make a phone call and there she sat, smoking a cigarette as usual leaving me to wait. Very unprofessional. I have recently noticed a decline in the amount of residents and I can honestly understand why. I've never seen any one in upper managemt take the time to sit and chat with a resident, breaks my heart. You should never be too busy for a resident. I've just never had a pleasant experience with either of the two, so excuse me for being biased. The only thing that is ever served for dinner is CHICKEN or PORK. I now take my mother out to eat twice a week just so she can have a taste of something different! The only activities they offer is a teenaged girl reading facts of the 50s or on her cellphone shaking a tamborine. I have seen ROACHES in the common area, and BM on the floor of the public restrooms. Not to long ago I found two pills on the floor of my mother's apartment which I brought to the RSS (office in the HAVEN) she must've assumed I wasn't still standing there since she had the AUDACITY to just toss them in the trash. Yes, tossed them in the trash...! Please, don't wait until its too late. Explore other options. I regret having my mother here for this long. But, 2016 is soon and she will be out.

Tour & dinner

Please don't be fooled by the pretty building. My father was there for only 4 months didn't even have time to settle in. He has dementia and alzheimer's he is 75 years old and 150 pounds and use of 1 arm. He had neck pain and the nurses only were able to give him tylenol which didn't help. We repetedly ask for pain medicine from the doctor and nurses. My father got angry because of the pain and threatend the staff (which I know is not okay) but they never addressed the problem. They sent him to ER where they told ER they weren't taking him back to send him to Peachford, where they would reevaluate him, they did not reevaluate they told Peachford he was not welcome back to find another place. All of this over pain medicine. I was told by staff that he basically sold the units in memory care because of friendlyness while they showed the units to family. Wow from that to Kick him to the streets. Nice. No understanding at all.

My husband and I will be contacting administration about the recent happenings with our family member at your facility- who is now in the hospital. Thank goodness a family member came from out of state (we live out of state as well) to visit so that our family member could be given the medical attention she needs. We will be calling and are verfy upset. We have many questions we need answered.

This was not the environment we are looking for at this time. We want a less restrict environment

There wasn't enough staff to care for the residents. The community convinces you to move your loved one in, and once they have your money, they no longer care for your loved one. The communication with the staff is horrible, as they don't return calls to the family. I would never recommend the community to anyone.

The place itself is really nice, however our loved one was just not getting her money's worth. The management was terrible and we have two big issues with them. One was the lack of communication, when you would approach them with an issue they said it would get done but they never followed through with it and the entire time our loved one was there nothing was fixed. They needed to have better medication management, they messed up multiples times, they were giving her the wrong dosages, at times they did not know what they were giving her because the medicine was not being administered by a nurse. They also would skip medication, and there was just no communication. Our second issue was the food, our loved one needed to be on a soft diet, and for five months she was only given two options to chose from and even then sometimes she was only given a few items to eat for the entire day. During those five months we had to go all the way up to the vice president to try and get this issue resolved and it never was. There was also a lot of staff turnover and our experience was just a complete disaster.

As a nurse I was very skeptical about placing my mother in an ALF. The staff at Atria, Windsor Woods have gone above and beyond to make my mom feel welcome as well as myself. It has been a five out of five experience thus far! Due to Covid 19, she is still on her mandatory isolation so she has not attended any activities, but she will and is excited to get involved!

Terrible ! Would not recommend

If you value your life do not be a patient here. In large part this is a dumping ground for people who are beyond help and have no where else to go. Dementia patients are mixed in with short term rehab patients. No doctors on site. All patient care is provided by one nurse, a bunch of aides many of whom struggle to speak English and a couple of physical herapy people. During my wife's 4 day stay the floor was never cleaned, her sheets were not changed, the floor boards under her bed were missing, with mrsa in a leg wound her bandages were discarded in the waste basket, she was not kept in isolation and care providers did not wear protective gowns and gloves, no iv was used to administer the antibiotic, her admittance questionnaire was not completed until 2 hours before she left and a treatment plan was never developed. Always physically inspect any rehab facility beforehand.

Can only speak for the rehab portion. Not impressed and would never recommend this place. Not even 24 hours after my grandmother was in the hospital, I visited her and she looked absolutely horrible. She was lethargic and week, could barely stay awake, and her skin was incredibly pale. The nurse refused to believe that she looked bad, and flat out argued with me. Now, my grandmother lives with me and I see on a daily basis. I am her primary caretaker, so I am pretty certain of when she looks ill. On top of that, I am also an ICU and ER nurse, so I definitely know when a patient is sick. He told me that she has looked that pale said she came in, which was not true. He was very dismissive, aggressive, and rude to me, eventually refusing to talk to me because "I am not on the facesheet.' I hit the call button because she had had a bowel movement, and I had managed to get her cleaned up and changed before anyone had even realize that the light was on. She had had to black stools throughout the day, which no one had bothered to alert the nurse to. She ended up being severely hypotensive and anemic with a blood count approaching critical levels. Clearly, the nurse in question who argued with me and said "we are trained to assess our patients" needs to hone his skills. She ended up with a severe diaper rash (which the nurse also argued with us about), and it took us staying on the staff to even get her bathed. She has been there one month and has really made very little progress as far as getting back to her previous level o functionality; her insurance is requiring her to be discharged because she somehow meets criteria for it - she can't even transfer to the bed or toilet safely and is unsteady on her feet. Makes me wonder what is in her medical record. So she is being discharged today, because she walked 150 ft once, and since she's walking soooooo well, they only arranged for her to have a wheelchair, no walker. The even knew she would have to get up stairs to get into the home. Zero effs are given as to how their patients/residents will function once they leave. Not sure how they earned high marks for their "skilled rehab," but coming from a healthcare professional, it is seriously lacking and should be avoided.

Staff was rude, inconsiderate, and lazy. I would stay away!

Okay, first off, my mom was not in this place, my father was. You are not qualified to assist people with dementia. With your facility it is all about the money. I am not really sure why my father was asked to leave, according to the reports they could not handle his memory issues---which according to your description of this place, this is your job. Furthermore, when we fired the director's husband as the realtor to sell my father's house, we believe this caused the difficulty of handling my father. I visited him several times, and unless he was to go on an outing that we had to pay additional monies for (already paying $5000 a month) he had no activities to speak of. I will never recommend this place to anyone, ever. You need to hire people qualified to work there, people who know what they are dealing with, and people who are educated in the memory loss arena. One last thing, the straw that broke the camel's back was when you required us to hire someone to babysit him at night time!!! Sundowning, folks!! Are you kidding me!! Proved to me, then and there, you were complete uneducated idiots, and nothing more than a business taking seniors monies.

No dining room manager last night. Why do you state there is always a manager in the dining room when there is not.

The servers constantly forget parts of the meal you order.

Comment: All seemed well when my parents moved in to Atria Evergreen Woods. My mom was in independent living and dad in memory care. The staff in memory care was very kind to both my parents. However, under their care he developed raw wounds on his groin area. This led to his being aggressive when being cleaned. To be fair, he was on medication for aggressiveness but until the wounds appeared he wasn't a problem. Long story short they decided he needed psychiatric care to change his meds (no one mentioned the groin wounds) Rather than allowing the medication change time to take affect, they Baker Acted my father against his family's strenuous objections. They put an 85 year old alzheimer's patient in a psych hospital not capable of caring for patients with memory issues. Dad had no idea why he was moved, couldn't communicate with the staff and they only allowed my mother to say goodbye to him because they needed her to give them dad's information. For better or worse, he was transferred to a regular hospital the next day due to pnemonia that wasn't noticed by the Cedar Wood staff. The hospital psychiatrist thankfully rescinded the Baker Act but the damage was done. Dad stayed in the hospital for 2 weeks and never really recovered from the whole experience. He died 6 weeks later. When he left Cedar Wood for the Baker Act, he was walking and eating his meals with assistance. When I made it to the hospital 2 days later, he was barely conscious. ALSO.. the hospital staff were the ones to point out to me his severe groin sores. They said no wonder he was aggressive. It took the hospital all of the two weeks to get his sores healed. Those were a result of the care he received at Cedar Wood and his resulting bad behaviour was treated by Baker Acting him. On another cautionary note, upon his release from the hospital, I moved both parents closer to me. However, due to the Baker Act on my father's record, it was almost impossible to find a care facility to take him. As for the independent care side, it was nice for mom but when she became ill with a flu that quarrantined several areas of the facility,t hey did not care for her as I was led to believe they would. They would bring her breakfast then not check on her until 7 that night. When I called to see what the protocol was for independent care when the person got sick, I was told that they would be assisted with meals for a few days, that's why living there was so great. I had to call the marketing director of the facility to get them to bring my mom a drink and soup, two days in a row. So, it is a nice place to live until your relative develops an issue.

We paid nearly $8000.00 a month to Brookdale for the care of my mother. I had also promised her that she would never be alone with strangers, so if I could not be with her, I had several lovely nursing students that stayed with her. And Thank God they did. The first morning when she woke up there, she asked for help getting dressed. The Brookdale staff member told her(in front of my caretaker) "You are nothing but a bowl of jello, you're completely flaccid. I'm not dressing you. You can stay in bed today." It was just horrible. I don't understand why anyone would talk to another human being that way. Unfortunately, what they say is true. When you complain, things get worse. My poor dear Mother was not given her nebulizer treatments when she needed them and the facility would not work with the Hospice group that I brought in with her. They wouldn't give her the medicine that she needed to sleep They wouldn't allow morphine that she desperately needed. She spent the last day of her life, screaming "help me, help me, help me" I finally got her some morphine and she died that night. She didn't need to suffer like that. I will never forget how poorly she was treated and how Brookdale let her suffer for no reason at all. None whatsoever. It's shameful.

OK First Off I want to give that there is a overall problem in all Health Care Employment Nation Wide. What ever Brookdale tells you is not always true. I do not know what other assisted living centers say but you need to be aware of the problems that go on. Brookdale at this location number one priority is getting new residence. They will tell people just about anything and say yes we can do it but they won't and on top of all they will increase the bill. They still will not do it on the weekends or off hours 7:00pm to 8:30am in the week.

Deplorable! Often management or supervisors are not on hand to oversee patients/residents care. You can leave numerous messages to have mgt. call you back regarding your family members' care and the phone call is never returned. My father has been there 13 months (too long) and his overall care has been unthinkable. For the last three weeks I have gone to visit him only to find him in bed, dirty, nasty diaper (twice with no diaper at all) and filthy bedding. Two weeks ago ants were in his bed when I removed the bedding to clean him up. Last week I was told he "probably" had C-Diff. And you wonder why? I have called the GA Dept of Community Health and reported this facility to them. The Fulton County Humane Society takes better care of their animals. I did not choose this facility. My brother did, strictly for convenience. This facility does not deserve a star....