Nursing Home Communities in Alameda, CA

"Mom is at Bay View Nursing and Rehab. It changed management, so that itself has its own challenges. And I think they still have a contract with Kaiser. It's an older facility, but it's clean. The new management has already started some renovations. For the most part, the services are fine. The food seem to be well thought out. I've met with the dietitian. She seem to be a nice person and interested with the patient. They could improve on communication and better planning for meetings. Anytime there's a change, there has to be a letter or specifically meetings so that people can ask questions. They should have a better way of communicating. "

"I prefer more outdoor area and a protestant sponsor. "

"I chose Salem Lutheran Home for my mom because it seemed like the best one for her. It had a suburban feel, which I thought she would like. It wasn't a high-rise, just basically one or two stories, they had a private room available for her, and it was very close to my house. The rooms were very homey and didn't feel like a hospital. The staff was generally good, everyone was really warm and friendly, but there just wasn't enough of them. My mom has passed and she stayed there for only a month and a half. She was sort of a special case and it was her first and last assisted living experience. "

"My friend has been at Windsor Healthcare Center of Oakland for about a month now. What I liked most about it is that they feed him 3 times a day, they change the bed every day, and they're there to help him, but I like something a little bit better. They have too many patients but not enough staff. Some of the staff are good, while some are probably overwhelmed with work. The meals come with water and juice, and they do pretty well. They celebrate the holidays. They just had a Halloween celebration. Every room has two hospital beds, a TV, a button to call for the nurse, and a shared bathroom with the room next to theirs."

"Lake Park in Oakland has a vibrant independent living component. I like the physical layout quite a lot. The rooms were larger than some places I've visited. It's an older facility, but it has been renovated a lot. It's a large building, too. The staff members are very positive and very helpful. I tried the food, but it was not the highlight of the community. They have a limited menu, and they aren't making as big a deal out of it as some places do. There were a lot of large and small rooms that you could use for different things, whether you were doing crossword puzzles, you were sitting in their library, you were having your friends over, or you were watching films. There were lots of spaces and different options, and you could reserve those for what you wanted to do."

"My brother was in Princeton Manor Healthcare Center. They do not take care of their patients as they should. They're very low class. They have no respect for the patients. The manager has no concern. If you share concerns with him, he never responds back. Overall, they should really consider reviewing that place on how they treat their patient. It's very bad there. I don't like it. The room that my brother was in was very despicable. They didn't clean him up like they should have. It was cold in his room and the patients kept complaining about the facility and the rooms being cold. They didn't address his issues. My brother fell on the floor there, and they didn't take him to the hospital. When I went back to see my brother another time, I had to request that they take him to the hospital, and he resided in the hospital for over a week or two. My brother wasn't able to eat and I did notice that they feed their patients at a certain time, but those patients were always hollering and talking about they were hungry. You have to wait until 12:00 before you can eat. The place was not that clean. They can improve on getting another director over the facility, someone to come in and review them periodically on what they're doing and get the staff more help or just more education on how to take care of people. My brother is on a feeding tube, and they didn't clean his feeding tube."

"I like Excell Health Care Center a lot. It seemed like every time there was somebody in the hallway in a wheelchair, a staff member would come and get them. They wouldn’t just go bobbing into the hallway. Whether it’s a medication question or my mom has been pushing the button, they come right away. They are very clean; they kept offering to give her a bath. Her roommate had passed away when she was there, and they handled that really well, too, to prevent trauma in my mom. The food was good, and they gave her a second. When she wanted a little bit more meat, they would give her more. "

"St. Paul's Towers is a large community with 14 floors. I like the people that I've met, and it's easily accessible. I like that the inside is filled with wood, and I like the big wood panels."

"The accommodations are old and very basic"”looking very much like small hospital rooms. In the way it's run, this place suffers from all of the negative effects of being part of the Medi-Cal system, and seems to cut corners on care. There are few resources dedicated to providing any real memory care at all"”and very few resources for entertainment of residents. In fact, most of the residents are left in their beds for most of the day, while some wander the halls alone. Since the staff seems overworked, they spend little time on the niceties of care, such as helping residents brush their teeth if needed. Residents who are paying privately rather than receiving Medi-Cal benefits are in demand. In fact, when we sought to release my mother-in-law, who was a private-paying resident, workers there attempted to frighten and threaten her to encourage her to remain. Very little innovation or imagination is used in caring for the residents. There are dinners for special occasions, but little else in the way of planned activities that are part of daily life. There is no designated space for entertainment or recreation, so no way to residents to get genuine privacy. Finally, the cost, which went up to $6,000 month recently before we moved my relative, is way overpriced, especially considering the accommodations and care there."

"This is the most caring facility. My mother spent her last few months at McClure and they treated her with such love, compassion and dignity. I cannot express my gratitude enough to these "angels" who helped my in my darkest hour. I noticed they also are quite effexctive in getting seniors "up". My mother has one roomate who was there for a short term and they were always encouraging here to get into therapy even when she was trying to be lazy. When she left it was with a smile."

"I wish zero stars had been an option..... RUN, do not walk, away from this facility. My mother-in-law needed rehabilitation after her surgery, and though this place looked shabby, we could find no other beds available locally. The "care" was shoddy at best, dangerous at worst. Prescribed medications were not administered, while tranquilizers which had not been prescribed obviously were. The doctor who attended her seemed incompetent and appeared to be suffering from dementia himself, as he was unable to understand anything we said or make himself understood. He looked and dressed like one of the more unfortunate residents, which we mistook him for when he wandered uncertainly into the room. In fact, he was so elderly and frail that at one point while standing with us, he began falling over into my wife, and she had to catch him and help him to his feet. If this sounds unbelievable, it was to us also. We had to take over much of her care. She was supposed to be receiving assistance with walking; there is a room with exercise and rehab equipment, but we never saw anyone using it, though we were there every day for over 2 months. My mother-in-law was in a wheelchair against her doctor's orders every time we arrived, and we had to help her get some walking practice. They lost many items of her clothing, though we had written her name in them; she never appeared in her own clothes after the first week. She presented with unexplained bruises, smelled and looked horrible, never was clean or had brushed teeth unless we did it during visits. My wife began to visit at different times during the day, and often found her asleep in bed with the blinds drawn. We often came just after dinner to find a full plate of uneaten food, with no one monitoring the fact that she hadn't eaten anything, and then someone would come for the tray. This may not have been such a bad thing, as I cannot describe how much like dog food some of the more unrecognizable food was. The worst part was that, out of concern for her welfare, we still had to be friendly with the uncompassionate and rude staff, especially one of the managers, Anna, who repeatedly assured us that my mother-in-law's stay was completely covered and that she would let us know the minute insurance coverage ran out, yet presented us with a large bill the day we went to pick my mother-in-law up, believing everything to have been covered. In what was supposed to be a restful place to recover, my mother-in-law's dementia and ability to walk worsened considerably, probably from inactivity. I would not let my dog stay in this place. "

"I was happy with Piedmont Gardens. The food was good and adequate. They had assistants and staff on-hand to meet my father's needs, they took care of him and moved him into a skilled nursing facility and brought him back to good health. The only thing was the building was well over 50 years old, it was well kept, but it lacked a little bit of personality and was bland. "

"My husband had his rehabilitation at Rehabilitation Center Oakland. The physical therapy part was very good. They had some lovely staff and nursing people. I thought they were very caring and they did their best. Just like any other nursing home, they were stretched thin sometimes and couldn't respond immediately when somebody put their call light on. They could improve by having more staff so they could have a faster response time. I could think of as many negatives as positives, and I was trying to be positive, but I thought it was a good place for rehabilitation, and the sanitation was fine. "