One of my parents lived in this facility for over 2 years. As with any place, it has its good and weak points. The weakest point is the food. I have tasted several of the dishes and frankly, eating Gordon Food quick food is not good, especially on a sustained basis. Example: tomato soup was the worst I have ever eaten anywhere (tried on 3 occasions), and grilled cheese was awful. Some of the lunch/dinner meats were bland and of poor texture. A lot of the food seemed to be prepackaged heat and eat type. Lot of individual serving fruit cups and pudding loaded with sugar. Special holiday meals were very good, probably cooked from scratch somewhere. Too bad those meals weren't available more often.
Most of the caregivers were excellent and compassionate, ran into a few issues with some of the evening/holiday caregivers, but overall care was good.
Facilities are very good, we only had a couple housekeeping issues that were ultimately resolved.
Enrichment activities were typical for assisted living. Hard to get activities that appeal to a wide range of backgrounds and likes. I give Elizabeth credit for being persistent. Glad that they offered Mass weekly.
Management staff was accessible and supportive. Yearly meetings were held to review care/concerns/potential improvements. Over the time we were involved with ML, there were more and more "corporate" mandates for this or that.
Corporate required using their chosen pharmacy and primary care providers. First primary care group (North something) was slow in responding and took over 8 months to review medication usage by patient, that's totally unacceptable. The second/replacement primary care group, Caroline, was much more responsive and did a much, much better job taking care of our loved one. Pharmacy pricing seemed competitive to buying from online pharmacies.
If we had to do it over again, we would use ML.
Provider Response
Hello, Thank you for leaving a review of our community. We are disappointed to read some of your concerns and would like to address them quickly here. We have a new Regional Executive Chef that is working to implement creating menus with scratch-based cooking based on resident and family feedback, and we encourage families to connect with us during this shift with suggestions. Regarding the healthcare issues you mentioned, we provide a pharmacy option to families, but it is up to them if they want to take advantage of that offer. When it comes to families choosing a care provider, we encourage families to decide if they want to continue using their already established PCP or using one of the care providers that do house calls in our community. If a family chooses the latter, our team is available to assist in connecting them with a direct contact and support in general. Still, the relationship is ultimately between the family and the care provider. To connect with us directly to discuss your experience, please reach out to our Executive Director, Becky Stephan.
