Oak Trace

Well, it was a high rating because they incorporated small homes and town homes into their campus. Then in November they announced they were knocking down the homes to build a new health center. The people that bought in to be able to live in a home with an attached garage and garden area were told to move to an apartment or vacate within the space of 6 months. A fine way to entice elderly people in, and then shuffle them around for business purposes. While the residents are seeking legal protection, Oak Trace keeps the pressure on to knuckle under. The situation stinks, and I would advise anyone considering Oak Trace to think deeply about how they treat their current residents and what they may do to you if you happen to be in the way of their plans

My parents are in Oak Trace. It's one mile from my home, so that's why we're there. The best part of Oak Trace is that they have everything on one campus. They have independent living, catered living, assisted living, a memory floor, and rehab. They have a tunnel under the ground that goes from one building to the next. The building that my parents are in right now is very old from the 1950s, but the other buildings are brand new, up to date, and state of the art. However, it's very clean. The meals are excellent. My parents have never complained about food. There are five or more items on the menu cooked by a chef. I'm very impressed with the food. It's not bland, hospital-type food. It is very well put together. There are activities every day. There's a calendar in the rooms and also by the elevator, so that anybody coming in would be aware of what's happening on that floor all day long.

I visited a resident at the independent-living apartments at Oak Trace, but when I went back for the actual tour, I was visiting the catered-living side or the assisted-living side. I was very impressed by the place. I like the independent-living and catered living sides very much to the same degree. It’s very light, airy, pleasant, appealing and beautiful. It’s esthetically very pleasing, just like being on a cruise ship. I never had that feeling that I was in an old people’s home or in a nursing home, which was impressive. I interacted with a couple of the staff and a couple of the residents, and I found the staff to be totally engaging and very honest with me, and the residents seemed to be very happy there. It’s one of the cleanest places I’ve seen -- really total quality, as far as the workmanship of the facility itself. The maintenance is top notch. Even in the catered-living, which I figured was going to be a little bit more downplayed, it still had crown molding and multi-part baseboard. The place is beautiful and so well-cared-for; it felt like a condominium complex. My friend’s mother-in-law loves it. She thinks the food is excellent. She has people come over and instead of them going out, they eat there. The menu looks like a restaurant menu for their offerings. She’s very pleased with it. The graduated care goes up as you go up each floor. It goes from assisted or catered living to where you can get help with the shower. You get three meals a day with no healthcare-related issues. As healthcare-related issues come into play, depending upon how much care you need, you move up to different floors. They have the most impressive woodworking shop that I’ve ever seen. They have every piece of woodworking machinery you can imagine and multiples of them. The workshop alone is probably twice the size of my condo, which is a thousand square feet. I met with one of the guys in the woodworking shop. He had Parkinson’s, and he had just had deep-brain stimulation done. He was telling me how much it has helped him, and now he can come down into the woodworking shop and make his baskets. It keeps him involved, and he loves it there. He went on about how much he liked the place. I was so impressed with the fact that they have a full-blown gym, a very large room that holds all their gym equipment. They have many machines and exercise balls. They had enough equipment there that any physical fitness person could accomplish anything they wanted. I can’t come up with anything negative about the place, except that it’s $4,200 a person. You have to have an astronomical income in order to handle it.

My mother wanted to move into Oak Trace because one of her friends was there. Other than that, she said the rooms were too small. She liked it; it was beautiful. They had activities that she would love and good food. They were probably one of the most expensive that I read about.

My sister was at Oak Trace for about a month in the rehab section. She had been in there once several years ago, so she was familiar with it and with her last hospitalization, they recommended she go to a rehab. It's convenient to her home and to my elder sister. We did not have any problems with them. Their physical therapists were excellent, but the nursing staff was fair; we weren't completely happy with them. Everything was very clean and cheery and it had good facilities and dining room. She didn't like the food because she had lost her taste, but what I had was at par with most of the places with hospital food. They had all kinds of social activities like bingo, parties, and patio barbecues, but she didn't participate too much in any of it. She had a shared room, which was kind of old and could've used a little updating, but it was clean.