Market Street Residence – East Lake

What an absolutely amazing memory care community in a much needed area. Feels so warm and inviting and an incredible care team . Highly recommend

AAA+++ 5 Stars – Thank You Market Street

Please read this after you have read the negative reviews. You will get a better understanding of what grief can do to a person. The guilt and loss can motivate one to leave a bad review even when he/she has never even visited the facility. It’s a horrible reality.
I have actually been inside Market Street many times to visit my mom and I’m going to give the best representation of it from my actual on-site experiences.
My mother was a resident here for 10 weeks. She lived with my father, my wife and me the previous 2 years.
We all had roles in her care that included showering her, cutting her nails, cutting her hair, taking her on walks, cleaning up after her, making food for her, dressing her, playing games with her and everything else you can imagine that comes along with advanced dementia.
Her dementia became so advanced that we could barely get her to eat. She was becoming frail and weak. She fought back when it came to showering, cutting her hair, cutting her nails, dressing her or even going to sleep. She was so weak that she would have episodes where she would almost faint standing up and she was determined not to sit down and rest.
I love my mom and would have done anything to keep her at home but it was just too much for us. My poor father was not handling the increasing stress very well and other family lived so far away that they might have visited once a year.
My father and I had visited several other care facilities in the previous years and they all reminded me of hospitals or asylums.
My wife, my dad, my mom and I ended up visiting Market Street. They gave us a tour of this incredible community and conducted an evaluation on my mom. It was a totally refreshing facility and we felt it was the best place for her to still have a little freedom. The hallways are set up in big circles so the residents could walk laps if they liked, which my mom did about every waking hour. Market Street took on all of the duties that we had been doing for the last two years and these duties were becoming increasingly more difficult each and every day. We were and are so thankful for them.
I visited her many times while she was at Market Street. All of the visits were unannounced except one. Every time I visited the staff was positive and enthusiastic. They were either playing games with the residents who wanted to play, cooking freshly prepared meals for them or attending to any of the many needs of individual residents. The announced visit was due to a meeting with the Executive Director Dawn to review how my mom was doing.
I found Dawn to be focused, concerned, competent, in control, and taking actions on the plans that were put into place. I had many face-to-face conversations with her. Again – I actually spent a lot of time with her, in person, having positive discussions about my mom.
Every time I visited Market Street, I saw an extremely energized environment, enthusiastic staff and residents enjoying whatever they were involved with. Of course, there were a few residents with more advanced stages of dementia that pushed against getting involved with activities and were very difficult to deal with. Unfortunately, my mom was one of those residents and it was heartbreaking to see her that way.
Sadly, my mom has passed. Dementia is a very terrifying disease that so many are people dealing with.
Market Street tried everything possible to include my mom in activities, to help her be happy, to provide a positive environment and to allow her the most freedom that they could in a situation like this. In my view, no place is perfect but Market Street is Excellent.

AAA+++ 5 Stars – Thank You Market Street

A 10 Week Nightmare

My mom was a resident here for 10 weeks. In the previous 4 years at home, she had ZERO falls. During her 10 weeks at Market Street, she was sent to the hospital 6 times – 5 were for “unwitnessed” falls where she complained of head pain. She likely had many more falls that didn’t result in hospital visits. When I tried to get Market Street to prevent future falls, the Executive Director Dawn said to me she was not concerned at all about my mom’s falls. Mom lost over 20 lbs because the staff would not consistently cut up her food for her or encourage eating. I don’t believe she took her medication regularly because I was told they try 3 times and that’s it. She did not have a care plan for the first 2 months. The turnover of staff and residents is very high. I believe my mom was the 63rd resident when she moved in. 8 weeks later, I was told they had 51 residents, 12 fewer in 8 weeks! My mom stopped being a resident after a suspicious fall that broke her RIGHT femur and caused a severe brain bleed on her LEFT side. We were told this occurred in her apartment even though it happened well after breakfast when residents are usually locked out of their rooms for the day. Despite many attempts to get specifics on what happened in that fall, as if trained by a lawyer, the Executive Director refused to answer our questions or respond to emails. It’s shameful that they refuse to tell a son what happened to his mom. This fall sent mom straight to hospice and she died days later. I write this to hopefully prevent a repeat of my mom’s experience. Do not fall for the bait-and-switch of a nice building, a slick tour, and empty promises from the leadership giving you their personal cell number guaranteeing timely responses. The skill of the care givers and the staffing levels are important. Market Street was not able to care for my mom properly.

Pro-activeness & Follow-through: We were the ones brainstorming and making suggestions for solutions even though we have no training in elder care. The Executive Director didn’t recognize issues as a problem so solutions weren’t implemented. Things that were promised were not done. Mom’s food was not being cut up for her. Scheduled video chats were routinely forgotten by the staff with no notices. We were promised weekly weights for mom – we didn’t receive any.

Fall Risks: I read the average falls for a resident in a facility is 2.6 per year. Mom was 10 times this average with just falls that sent her to the hospital. Market Street never identified her as a fall risk or took reasonable precautions to prevent falls. Did they watch her closely? Encourage using handrails? Walk with her to steady her? Try a walker or wheelchair? Install fall pads next to the bed? Install an alarm that sounds if she got out of bed on her own?

Tracking Software: Food intake, hydration, weight, and medication should all be tracked and readily accessed. Market Street never reported any of this to us so were they tracking it? Other facilities do track it and have cameras or motion sensors in the rooms.

Interfacing With The Family: I’m not aware of 1 photo of my mom that was sent to any member of the family by Market Street. Another facility, Grand Villa, told me they send out a simple 1-sentence group text every day like “She’s a little tired today” to the families of 75% of their residents. Market Street never did anything like this.

Encouraging Eating: Market Street didn’t encourage eating or try things like Ensure or Meal Replacement Ice Cream. Some families are forced to hire outside staff to come in and encourage eating. In fact, my family member witnessed a staffer on her phone during meal time and scolding a resident, “Well, if you don’t want to eat, then don’t eat!” when she took her full plate away.

Leadership: I found Executive Director Dawn to be very dismissive of our concerns. I always look for a sense of competence in people with responsibilities (are they on top of it? do they have this under control?) Dawn did not give me that sense because she seemed completely overwhelmed.

I had to give this place a star in order for my review to be posted. Consider this a NO-STAR review.
Please don’t be fooled by the tasteful decor, the warm and welcoming staff, and especially the lovely hazelnut coffee aroma they pipe throughout the building. I was taken in by all that and will always regret it.
I assumed a facility like this would have protocols in place for every imaginable emergency. But apparently they do not, so I’d like to recommend a few:
Rule #1: When a resident is taken to the hospital via ambulance in the middle of the night, please try ALL the phone numbers in your records. Do not just call the first number and leave a garbled, inaccurate voicemail.
MSEL had four (4) phone numbers to call, and they called only my home phone–not my cell, not my two children. I was out of town that night and didn’t get the message until 10 AM the next morning when the nurse from the hospital called my cell phone.

Rule #2: When you leave a voicemail, please direct the family to the right hospital.
When I got home and listened to the message, I discovered the woman told me he was taken to the wrong hospital.

Rule #3: When a hospital nurse calls to get information on a patient that was brought in from your facility, please don’t be rude; she’s only trying to get information to do what you should have done at 1 AM last night–inform the family.

Rule #4: Make sure the patient is in his own clothes when you put him in the ambulance. It does not speak well of your facility when the family doesn’t recognize the clothes he was wearing.
And to add insult to injury, he was wearing women’s reading glasses. (I never did get his glasses back.)

I have a fairly lengthy list of other mistakes that were made in this situation, including the fact that he tested positive for C-Dif after being in the facility 2 1/2 days. My understanding is that one contracts that disease only in hospitals and nursing homes.
I hope I’ve gotten my message across. They turned what was the worst weekend of my life into an almost unbearable nightmare.
One last insult occurred when I wrote a letter to the CEO describing how badly the staff handled our situation; I thought he should know, would want to know. I received a short TEXT message with his condolences and assurances he’d “handle” it. Really? I love texting my friends and family, but a text–not a letter, not a phone call, but a 90-second message–from a professional on the day you’ve made your husband’s funeral arrangements?
I do not recommend this facility.

I was completely amazed from the moment I walked in this community!!!! So much thought was put in to the planning and care of memory care residents. The staff go above and beyond from ensuring the residents are cared for, and they genuinely care not only for the residents but their family members as well. The meals are freshly prepared with multiple choices!