Bloom At Kokomo

My dad moved into Bloom at Kokomo. It is a very welcoming place and makes you feel right at home. My father loved it. It doesn't feel like a hospital setting like other places. The staff is very nice. They have bingo. They do trivia. My dad doesn't like the food. The dining room is very clean and very nice. They will take them out to places and drive them around. They do his laundry and clean his room.

I chose Bloom At Kokomo for my mother. What I like about them is that they have assisted living, memory care and severe memory care, all at the same facility. So if she gets worse, she doesn't have to move. She can move within the same building to a different wing. The food is average. I think it's nutritiously balanced, it's what they need, it's geared towards old people and what they can eat. They have their bigger meal at lunchtime and the dinners are very often just cold sandwiches or something like that. But those old people don't eat very much anyway, so it's adequate but it's not delicious by any means, and I would never pay to eat there. The person I worked with on entry, some kind of director of community relations, that person was outstanding. She was excellent, very thorough, and provided a lot of information. She took time with me, gave me her personal cell phone if I had any other questions. That's the main thing that got me in there to go for a tour. When I called her, she wasn't abrupt in treating my question. I didn't know what I was doing; this is my first time and I didn't have this experience before. She's very patient, thorough, took her time, and adjusted her schedule so I could meet with her when it was convenient for me. She's just very nice. They've had some turnover in the memory care department, and the person that's in there now is excellent. The person that was in there before, the first few months my mom was there, was average at best. They're very, very good right now. But that first person that was in there was not responsive and didn't know and could never answer my questions. I always had to ask somebody else. But obviously, they found that out because she's not there anymore, and they replaced her with a much better person. The director was the same way, the director that was there when I got there was not on top of things the way somebody that's a director and operational manager should be. But the man they have in there now is outstanding. So they've made a lot of changes since May, when my mom went in there, and where they are now for the better. The maintenance is very good, I liked it a lot, both on the assisted living side and the memory care side. They cleaned the rooms three times a week. They help with whatever kind of spills or accidents in the bathroom or anything that might happen there, and they're on it right away. They take care of the clothes washing. It's still a nursing home atmosphere, so it's not a happy, joyous place, but it's very clean. It's very adequate. Everything is on the first floor for my mom and that's what she needs, not up and down any steps. They have a lot of activities. My mom has dementia, so she's not up to many of those. Sometimes they have a trivia about old-time stuff, where they ask them about things that happened back in the '40s and '50s when they were alive. And the people seem to like that. I've brought in different kinds of treats multiple times, and they allow it as long as it's prepackaged. And they do their best to facilitate getting the 14 people in her wing together to have a treat or whatever it might be. They have things like they do their nails on one day, my mom likes that, and they have bingo every Wednesday and Friday. They have some movies that they watch, there's generally music in the living area and the residents are sitting out there. They do a good job of trying to provide options. The other thing I like is they are not pushy, because if she doesn't want to do it, they don't make a big deal about it, they don't make her then. So that's good because I don't want that. They take them out as well. There's a bus and it will take them like for a ride, or to a store to go shopping, or they did a band concert in the park and things like that. It's very good if your person isn't as bad, and I see the people enjoying that. It's expensive but they're all expensive, so it's comparable. The thing I like about it is the fee is fixed per month compared to the other place I looked at, which had a sliding fee, depending on what you needed. So as you needed more, your price went up, so that's why I picked this one.

I went to the Bloom at Kokomo. It is the same deal as the other place I went to, you have to furnish everything. It's closer to my house, and I'm like five minutes away. It's absolutely beautiful that I took my daughter, and I took my neighbor with me, and I took two different tours there. I only dealt with one lady, and she was nice. But I didn't think that would work for my husband because the rooms they had looked out on a brick wall, and where he's at now, he can see out the window. And then the thing that bothered us there was we didn't see any people around. When I took my daughter back for my second tour she said, Where are the people? She said I guess they're all in their rooms and you'll see them when they come down for supper when we finish the tour. And when we did that, we saw about two people. And I thought, his doctor wants him to socialize. This doesn't look good if everybody just stays in the room with the door shut. So that's why I decided against that one. The dining area was nice. It's three floors and on two of the floors, I noticed they even have like a little laundromat, where you could go in and wash your own clothes. It's very nice, but it reminded me of a hotel where there are rooms lined up, but you don't see any people. They've got one big room. There was a big TV screen and two rows of recliners for people to go in and watch movies in it. It's cheaper than where I'm at, but it just wouldn't work for my husband.

The Bloom at Kokomo felt more modern, newer, fresh, the building was newer, and it's not as hospital feeling, it's more apartment feeling. There's a courtyard and a little patio by each room's window that they can look out onto. There's a kitchen for them to cook in, and there's a movie theater for both memory care and the assisted living side.