Ivy Lodge

Reviewer#ET0817

I toured Ivy Lodge. I like the three levels of care, and I like the location. The staff was helpful and friendly. I did not see the rooms because they had a couple of cases of Covid at the time.

Julie

My mother has moved into Ivy Lodge. I like it more and more. It's a small place. I think there are only 35 people there. Some of them need memory care, and some of them are assisted living and they're kind of mixed. My mother has fairly extreme Alzheimer's, but she's receiving such loving care. The staff are all trained and are working with elderly people with dementia. They have to go through training. Everybody, including the kitchen staff and the director, is wonderful, and the activities director is wonderful. They're very loving, they have a good sense of humor, and they're respectful and patient to these elderly people. It's a pretty amazing place. There's an exercise class every day. It's all in chairs or wheelchairs, but it's wonderful. They play games. They have arts and crafts. There's some music therapy. The activities director is very inventive. She gets people together. For example, for happy hour, there's no alcohol, but she'll always have something like hot chocolate and some special cookies. Everybody just sits around, talks, and laughs and then they watch movies together sometimes, so lots is going on. Some of the rooms are like little apartments. Two rooms share an entry room and a bathroom, and that's worked out well for my mother. Her neighbor is lovely. They're both 95. With regards to location, it's within walking distance of the heart of the Saugerties village, which is lovely. There are restaurants, a wonderful bookstore, and all kinds of interesting little stores, but it's down in the quiet part of Main Street. Ivy Lodge is very cozy and inviting. It's in a big old house that has a fairly large wing built onto it where most of the rooms are. There's a living room and a parlor. There are three floors. The dining room and the laundry are on the bottom floor. Then there's the first floor with the main entrance and a lot of rooms. On the second floor, there's a closed unit for people with memory care who have real issues with wandering. My mother is on the first floor because she's very quiet and easy. All the residents are treated like family. They're treated as if this is their home. My mom likes to wander around with her walker, and I just found out yesterday that sometimes she goes and sits on the chair beside the director in his office, and sometimes she sits in the same room where the activities director has her desk. She's welcome everywhere. There's a lot of family involvement for a good number of people from the local area. The food is quite good. It's freshly made. I've sat with my mom through several meals. She gets her food ground up now because at a certain point, trouble swallowing can start happening. Even then, she's eating well, so the mush seems to taste good. There are only 15 people dining there at any one time. The dining area is right beside the kitchen, and it's got comfortable padded armchairs and good-sized tables. So if they're looking for something that is very, very homey, personable, and small, this would be it. It's a little shabby. They have all kinds of projects lined up. The front steps need a little painting, but the porch in the front that wraps around the building is very generous and deep and has tables and chairs on it. There's somebody who is full-time working on anything that needs to be fixed. It's a big old house. The house area is not shabby. It's very nice. It's got a lot of character, it's picturesque and it's welcoming.

Katie

Ivy Lodge was by far the most wonderful that I toured. I liked the spaciousness of the rooms, comparatively speaking, from the other places that I viewed. I was looking for double occupancy for my mom and my dad, so that's an important thing. They had a nice facility. The residents were very happy and very talkative. The people who were running the Ivy Lodge were so friendly. It just looked like a wonderful place to go. It's not a locked-down area. They allow the residents to come and go at the level that we were going in. They have an upstairs facility that the residents are not allowed to move out of and that is secure, but I like the fact that they could go out on the porch. It was nice. I liked the Ivy Lodge a lot. The staff was friendly and they were very active in working with the residents there. They're very pleasant to work with. They're farther away than we would have liked to be for the hospital that we are choosing.

Ettore

My friend moved into Ivy Lodge in December. It is a very impressive place. The food is very good. The dining area and the common areas look very pleasant. The whole facility is very pleasant and very friendly.

Reviewer#JM220722

I went to look at Ivy Lodge. I was a little bit concerned about the fact that many of the rooms shared a bath and a somewhat inadequate kitchen area. The rooms were very small. The director was very committed to his program. I didn't see any evidence of residents going into the community, to the movies, or shopping, or playing, which was a concern to me. I thought the dining room lacked décor. It was not appealing.

Robert

Ivy Lodge was a beautiful place. The price was just right and we loved the way it was set up. We spent a lot of time with the gentleman who took us through. He was incredible. The place was exactly what we would like to have, except that they don't transition to Medicaid. The apartments were very nice. We looked at private rooms and shared rooms (where you have two rooms and one bath), and they were clean and orderly. It seemed to be well run, too. It was excellent.