La Vida Real

Met with the sales staff several times to go over what is offered at La Vida Real and then met with the intake assessment gal. She stated that we must pay an extra fee of $ 500 per month for med management. The med management charge is something that is not negotiable and is an extra tack on for costs. We asked why this charge is not built into the base cost and were told that it’s their corporate structure, so we have to pay it. The intake gal was not very pleasant and the executive director didn’t seem to really care about our concerns. We left there feeling like we had been mislead. Please read all the fine print before agreeing to send relatives there. Awful customer service. We will not be sending our loved ones here.

I’m writing this review in concert with several other family members regarding the living and care experience for my mother during her 5 ½ year tenure at La Vida Real.
Firstly, the facility itself is equivalent to a 5 star hotel. Well laid out with high quality construction and finishes and meticulously maintained.
Activities and opportunities for meaningful social interaction were plentiful at every level of resident physical and cognitive capacity.
During her years at La Vida Real, my mother required increasing levels of care and supervision, transitioning from a one bedroom, independent living apartment to an assisted living studio, and finally to the memory care unit where her living/​bedroom shared a bathroom with her neighbor.
The staff facilitated these transitions with a minimum of effort and expense, and were able to provide the greater degrees of care and supervision with fairly modest increases in her monthly charges. It is also important to note here the kind, caring, and friendly nature of the staff which we were able to observe over the course of years, visiting several times per week. The only area which we would like to have seen improved would be the staff’s proactive encouragement for my mother to get out of her room and engage with others. She needed a bit more prodding than she received in this regard.
Another 5-​star aspect of La Vida Real was the dining. The quality and variety of the meals, and the setting in which they were served, was comparable to a fairly nice restaurant for most of the residents. In the memory care unit, the meals were a step simpler and the setting more of a cafeteria, but still quite ample.
Lastly, one needs to consider the cost of residing at a facility like La Vida Real. While my mother’s charges of about $ 4700 (independent living) to $ 5300 (memory care) per month were not inexpensive, there was no hefty up-​front fee or a need to «purchase» her living unit as we found in several other facilities of comparable quality.
On the whole, La Vida Real provided my mother with a wonderful, safe, and caring environment to spend the last years of her life. As frequent visitors, we family members were always treated with courtesy and were able to go about our days knowing that our mother was being well cared for. For this, La Vida Real has our enduring gratitude.

This is a beautiful facility with lots of amenities. My grandmother lived here for three years, and we recently chose to move her. I am writing a review based on her experience, and our exit experience.
Our issues were with the caregivers and staff only. My grandmother began complaining about the staffs treatment of her early in the experience, and as she can be difficult, we dismissed her concerns without investigating. We chalked her complaints up to her loneliness and general cantankerous nature. Unfortunately I discovered that the caregivers are indeed disrespectful and borderline mentally abusive. I realize this is a bold statement to make, but it is something both my mother and I witnessed and were shocked by. If your parent or grandparent has cognitive difficulty or is the opposite and very active, I can almost guarantee you would have a different experience. However, if you have a relative who needs some care do not expect it to be provided, even at the 5000 a month pricetag. I would give the facility fewer stars, but I cannot debate the fact that it is clean, beautiful, and provides a wealth of activities. I also will say that the nursing director and a very few caregivers were supportive with regard to my grandmothers cat when she went into the hospital.
Speaking about our exit experience– it was a big shock. No assistance was given, the staff was taciturn, uncooperative, and unresponsive, we were denied silly things like trash bags, and my mother was verbally attacked by a staff member when asking where to park a moving truck. When I say verbally attacked I mean yelled at. No direction, help, or concern were evident. I will also say this– my mom is a nurse and has worked at other facilities where literature and moving boxes were provided to families moving out.
Again, there is every possibility that this could be a wonderful place for your loved one. It turned out to be the opposite for us, and that is the focus of this review.