Gold Country Health Center

Gold Country Health Center has the best reputation in this area, but we felt it was too much of a hospital, institutionalized setting. The staff was very nice when we toured. I don't have any complaints about that, but we just didn't feel it was the right place for my mother-in-law. She would have been in a shared room and the showers were public, so she wouldn't have her own bathroom. There were a number of different options there, but for my mom-in-law with advanced Alzheimer's, we had very limited options because she needed 24-hour care. The place was clean, and the staff was nice.

My mother has been at Gold Country Skilled Nursing for almost eight years. The staff and nurses are excellent. What I like about Gold Country is that they have the apartments, assisted living, and skilled nursing. So a person can be in skilled nursing and go back to either assisted living or the apartment. They are currently rated 5 out of 5 by Medicare. Take a tour and go see for yourself.

We visited the Gold Country Health Center in Placerville, California mostly because it is a smaller facility, and we thought this would suit our aunt better than a larger one. She has memory issues and we feel that she needs more care because of that. The outside of the facility looked nice enough, however, there was nothing remarkable about it. The staff was professional, but the environment did not seem as pleasant as others we had visited. There wasn't a lot of interaction between the staff and residents. We also noticed that many of the staff looked like they were in a hospital. Other facilities had their staff dress more casually, which we believe made for a more congenial atmosphere. The main rooms were adequate. The private rooms looked more like hospital rooms than any other assisted living facility we had visited. They showed us a list of activities which seemed sufficient, but did not include many on-site visits for entertainment. We were told the cultural events were not on a calendar, so we couldn't see if they actually existed, which we were a bit bothered by. The facility looked clean, however, there was a chemical cleaning odor and we wondered why such strong cleaners were being used. The food looked okay, however, we were not offered to try it. Overall, we didn't notice anything particularly bad about the place, but we just didn't like the vibe and realized that there are too many other much nicer places to consider.