89 Assisted Living Communities in Dane County, Wisconsin

Christopher Ory

DO NOT LEAVE YOUR LOVED ONES HERE! All the positive reviews you might see are from before this facility changed hands to a new management company. It was pretty good then. Now it is an absolute dumpster fire. -They have repeatedly raised the rent on residents to the limit of ability to pay while slashing costs and reducing staff and services. -The food is awful. It\'s cheap and doesn\'t meet minimum nutrition requirements. -Their staff is nice but the facility is horribly understaffed and under-skilled. -For most of my mother\'s time there there has been no driver or activities director for the residents. They can’t keep staff for longer than a couple months. -There have been multiple COVID outbreaks leading to hospitalizations. These outbreaks have not been reported to the state as required. Every time I go the staff are unmasked. They quickly put masks on when they see me. The residents are all unmasked and gathering in communal areas. They won’t deliver food to residents\' rooms forcing them to eat together in the communal area. -It regularly takes up to 3 hours for them to respond to a help call from a resident. -There have been several injuries recently with no RN on duty or available when called. Including a broken leg where the resident had to wait 3 days in her room with the injury before someone could take her to a doctor. This facility has been on the state\'s radar for a while with multiple complaints of poor care. Be Warned..

ReviewerRD12122020g

We're at The Jefferson. It's strictly independent, so we really have no help at all. We get three meals a day, which has been wonderful during the pandemic because they deliver three meals a day right to our apartment. We're so thankful for that. The Jefferson is pretty nice. They have a lot of things that would be offered in any senior community. However, they have very limited transportation. Actually, what we have is, they will take you Monday through Thursday to your medical appointments on a very limited schedule. The bus leaves here at 9:00 a.m., and you have to finish your appointment and be picked up and back here by noon. That's pretty limited. Then in the afternoon, sometimes, they will take you for a very quick trip to some of the nearby grocery stores. I think all of the staff members are caring people. We had lived in several different senior communities in Arizona before our family insisted that we come back here, and in all the ones we lived in Arizona there would be a staff person for whatever the thing was, like we had a person in charge of housekeeping, and we had the same housekeepers. It was always the same person. However, all these people who work here in The Jefferson interchange their duties. One day you may have them in the dining room, and the next day you may have them up doing housekeeping. It is so different from anything we have been used to. Maybe that's the way it is in a lot of places. Some days the food is wonderful. Other days, I just don't eat it, and I will eat something that I have saved from some time before. Food is OK; it's pretty good. My husband thinks it's wonderful. I'm more picky than he is I guess. Activity is quite limited since COVID has set in. Prior to that, and even right now with COVID being as bad as it is, they're trying to have a maximum of ten people at a time for a session of bingo like a couple of times a week. We had bridge in Arizona, but they don't have bridge here. They show movies nearly every night a week. They have a room where they show some movies. Both my husband and I have not been in the best of health since we have been here, so we don't do a lot with the activities. Before, they would have musical entertainment or some local people who are musicians who would come in, which was entertaining. The beauty shop has excellent people in it. Based on the rent that we pay, I don't think we're getting what we're paying for. Also, we have one elevator for all these many residents here, not only one elevator to get the residents from one spot to another, but only one elevator for people moving in or out. They don't even have a freight elevator.

Richard

Everything seems quite good at The Jefferson. My friend is new so he's learning how they operate and what he is allowed and not allowed to do. Everybody's very friendly. They're trying to do what they can to help him when he has questions. It's a positive experience. I've personally been very happy about it. He seems to be getting along well. The only one person that I wasn't totally happy with was their maintenance man who had promised to help set things up and do things and then said, "I can't do that, I'm not supposed to do that." Maybe it was a misunderstanding on my part, but the rest of the staff has been great. The facility seems pretty good. The one thing I was concerned about right from the start is there's only one elevator and it probably could hold four people, but they have it restricted to two people with the virus going on. I don't see how people on the third floor are gonna get out of their if there's an emergency. I looked at other places and this one was the least expensive of the bunch. They're not cheap though. It's a reasonable value given what the cost of going to one of those homes is and what they do.

Jack H.

My sister moved into the Jefferson. It has wonderful staff, they're very helpful, and they have a beautiful facility. It's independent, but they have a relationship with a higher level care providers that are able to provide additional support in place, like give medications and clean the house. They have the ability to bridge into higher level of care, but start as independent, kind of let someone age in place, without having to go to assisted living. It's a good location, with great food, and caring staff and it's a nice place. They have a professional concert band that plays there several days a week, they're really amazingly good, they have movies 4 nights a week, they have shuttle buses that take them to doctor's appointments or places they want to go, and they have art classes and lectures for people to come in and talk.

VB

The Jefferson was rather small and much more limited than some of the other places we looked at, although the location was perfect. We were just looking for something with quite a lot more activity. The place was perfectly pleasant, it just wasn't quite what we were looking for. They need to be much bigger to have the resources to meet the standards of some of the other places we saw. Also, when we looked at the menus they offered, it was clear that there wasn't anything in there that I was interested in eating since I'm vegetarian. My husband wasn't impressed either. It was kind of Wisconsin comfort food, like burgers and meatloaf.

Marion

The Jefferson's main area badly needed new carpeting. The man who was showing us around was not dressed professionally. Some of the staff was very obliging to talk to, though. It wasn't really bad, but it wasn't really good. They had a small workout room and had a hairdresser come in. People were friendly, and the chef seemed interesting. They had outings on a little bus. The building itself looked nice on the outside, and they had a big foyer. The grounds looked beautiful.

Shanda

The Jefferson is an independent living plus facility. The residents are fairly independent for the most part, but they provide three square meals a day and weekly housecleaning. They have a variety of food, and my grandmother can choose which meal she wants. They have two weekly housecleanings, which includes linen cleaning, her bed being made, transportation, and some of the basic things that she's not able to do for herself. It was a huge draw but when you add in the amount of care that the staff members have for the residents and the respect that they show, it's absolutely astounding. It will be a great place for her and they have the ability for her to age in place. As she needs more care and more services, they have programs there that you can add on to be able to keep her comfortable in her home for as long as possible. She loves the activities. There's a variety from adapted physical activities as well as card games, social activities like movie night and activities for New Year's Eve. They're always asking the residents for feedback and adding things in and adjusting. The food is absolutely fantastic.

Evamarie

I really like The Waterford at Fitchburg, that's why I chose it. The staff is very nice and helpful, and I don't have any complaints. The grounds look very pretty, and the location is convenient for me.

kar

Lazy staff. The new management never interacts with the residents. The Dementia Care area smells like urine and the resident's look dirty. Staff spends more time on their cell phones than taking care of my family member. It's a dump.