Aegis of Issaquah

We were looking for a place for my mother who has beginning stages of dementia. First, as upsetting as it is to have my mom dealing with this disease and of course my dad being worried about her, etc. finding the «right» place has been a pretty scary experience. We chose this community for what seemed to us to be a very loving environment and also the outside spaces. Most of the other places we went to had very limited outside spaces for residents in a secure memory care area. My mom loves the outdoors. She was a master gardener and worked outside constantly. So far we are thrilled with our experience.

My Mother-​In-​Law began showing signs of dementia in 2013 while living alone in Queen Anne. We researched and researched and, after looking at many different facilities chose Aegis Lodge of Kirkland. We were happy about the look and feel, the staff and the way we were accommodated through a tough transition. Ultimately, she settled in to assisted living and was happy and settled for the next year! Then her dementia worsened and a medical emergency presented. After a long and complicated remediation involving some geriatric psych care, we engaged Aegis with the question, what’s right for Marilynn? We identified a cottage community tailored for dementia patients at Aegis Issaquah. We were immediately taken with the open floor plan, easy access to a secure outdoor area! And mostly, what has been impressive 3 months in is the quality of the staff end to end. From the Director of Operations, Patrick through each care person to the nursing staff even to the Maintenance Director, Paul S., there’s a clear presence of care and even love for what they provide for the residents. My Mother-​In-​Law is cared for as one would hope and perhaps even more importantly, my wife’s peace of mind and happiness is palpable and a welcome product of what Aegis provides!

I moved my mom into Aegis Issaquah specifically because of the wonderful environment and staff there. They are extremely knowledgeable and passionate about this kind of care. The open spaces with the sense my mom has that she can be free and outside is awesome! Patrick, the general manager is extremely caring, responsible and resourceful. He completely took the burden off of me down to the details of finding my mom a new doctor near the facility, scheduling the appt and transporting her. I would recommend anyone to have aegis issaquah be the place for a loved one to go.

My experience with Aegis did not end well. I had my mom there for about three years in their Issaquah facility. On the plus side the actual caregivers themselves were very dedicated and really did their very best to help make my mom’s time there pleasant. There are lots of activities and the place sure looks good from the outside. One of the challenges of working with this facility is their somewhat complicated fee basis. They have a system of care points and rates and rent points and rates with monthly invoicing that makes it difficult to really understand what you are being charged and why. While in the beginning the monthly charges were quite stable, all of a sudden they quite unexpectedly and without an actual change in my mom’s care needs just decided to up and double our monthly cost. In questioning them, we were told that there was an accounting error and we should have paid more the whole time! After some back and forth we realized that we needed to move her out since we couldn’t pay this extreme rate increase and there was very little sympathy (read none) as to the impact moving a 90 year old woman that had always been a good resident and customer (we always paid on time and did everything we were ever asked). So know going in that there are costs variables and as we were told the company has targets to hit in terms of what each bed/​room/​resident needs to generate in terms of revenue and if you or your loved one ain’t cutting it, they will raise you fee to whatever they feel it needs to be.
Beyond the money, I will also comment on a couple of other aspects that weighed on our decision to move out. We felt the quality of the facility slipped quite a bit over the time we were there. While the caregivers really do their best, we came to see just how thin they were spread (especially off hours) and always managed to ‘efficiency’ meaning keep moving. I also found myself often doing routine maintenance– unplugging the toilet, changing lightbulbs, fixing window cranks, etc. after just being tired of asking for them to be fixed you just do it yourself. In interacting with the population there and coming to better understand what as and wasn’t being done, we also started to really question the quality of time and care my mom was receiving– residents were often just ‘parked’ in front of the TV or other situations. We ended up moving her to family home and it is such a better environment I wish we had done it sooner.