Edgewood - Brainerd

Randy

My parents are residents of Edgewood Brainerd. It's kind of on the edge, outside of the city itself. It's in a nice rural setting, like half a mile outside of town. It feels like it's out in the country. It's a one-level facility, which we really like, and it has a nice appearance. It has an assisted living area around one courtyard, and then behind that is the memory care facility that is then around another courtyard. So, each area kind of has its own courtyard, and they're separated by a locked door between the memory care and assisted living, but all one level. This was a big attraction for us; there's no stairs or so. It's fairly simple to negotiate, the worst you can do is go in a circle around a courtyard. It's got nice amenities. It feels like they are fully staffed now. When we moved in I would not have said that, but I think lots of these places were struggling to be fully staffed. My folks are in memory care, but they seem to have nice lounges where they have activities in assisted living. They'll have a bingo event one afternoon a week, or they will have people playing card games or puzzles in the assisted living. It's a nice kind of community lounge area, and the dining rooms are nice and well-lit with windows. The food seems fine. The common areas are nice. Their staff seems to be good. We've had a few things slip through the cracks, but I think that was more a staffing issue than anything. I think there are more amenities in the assisted living, but that's not where my folks are. It's just a physically attractive looking facility. I've seen my folks at some of their meals, and the food appears attractive and seems sufficient. In the memory care they do seem to have some art activities, and some basic exercise. Many of the people back there are in wheelchairs. They do some low-level activities. When we moved there, it was kind of on the tail end of COVID stuff. So, I think they're starting to do more activities where they might take them out on a bus ride or something like that. They did something once this summer, where they took some people out on a pontoon boat kind of thing. They're trying to get back to more of that, and there hasn't been much since we've been there, but they do have some activities. They have an activity director who comes around. They do some singing, some music kinds of things. Those are the things that I'm aware of in the memory care area.

caring11211

Edgewood Vista is nice, clean and neat. We have no complaints except that breakfast is a little bit early. My mother never gets the chance of a hot breakfast because she wouldn't get up and go down that early.