The Highlands is a great long term/rehab care facility in Owasso. When my elderly mother was no longer able to live at home, we settled on The Highlands as a care facility.
Overall, the staff are great. As with any business, you have your subpars and your superstars. Based on my experience, Highlands has far more superstars.
Some things to note, from my personal experience are listed below. And keep in mind, these aren't dings against The Highlands. Just observations. One thing you need to understand... you are a key component in your loved ones' experiences at The Highlands, just as with any other business.
Also, it must be noted that this review is based on the presence of heightened quarantine measures due to the Covid situation. In any ordinary situation, I feel most of these would not have been an issue, as visitation would have been unrestrained and frequent. As it was, I was not able to visit my mother during her entire two month stay, other than to stand outside her window and talk on the phone. It was literally making the best of a bad situation, and I don't fault The Highlands for that. They were/are under strict guidelines that they have to follow.
Onboarding/orientation. I think there is a lot of room for improvement in this area. Mom didn't really get any type of orientation/welcoming activity, so she didn't really know what to expect. There was a lot of her telling me what was wrong, and me having to relay that to the social worker, which is never a good process.
The facility itself is beautiful, well maintained and clean. Spacious hallways and large rooms make the facility much more attractive.
The staff, as mentioned above contains some real stars. Mom repeatedly praised Melinda as a great caregiver. One issue that seemed to be pervasive was the lack of follow through on requests. I had a couple of discussions with the administrator about this, and she readily acknowledged that it's a perpetual training issue. As with any for-profit business, there's never enough people for all the work, and that leads to things getting forgotten. But, at the end of the day, when you have someone who is largely dependent on others for their care, you just can't 'drop the ball' and forget to follow through.
The food quality was also very cyclical. A lot of times, meals were incomplete, lukewarm or cold, or just not good. What we didn't know was the resident has the option to request something else if that meal misses the mark. Again, back to the onboarding and setting expectations.
When mom passed, the staff were all so great, caring and considerate of our needs. I can't thank them enough.
With nursing homes, it seems all you ever hear is the bad stuff, so I'm taking the opportunity to share the good stuff as well. read more
