Overall sentiment across the reviews is mixed but leans positive with meaningful caveats. Many families praise CERTUS Premier Memory Care Living for its new, bright, and purpose-built environment, dementia-focused design, and broad amenity set. Frequent positive themes include a spotless, hotel-like facility; chef-prepared meals and a restaurant-style dining experience; a range of therapeutic and recreational amenities (cinema, courtyards, salon, PT/exercise rooms, fish tanks, library, art workshop); and specialized dementia features such as door pictures and household-style small units. Several reviewers highlighted compassionate, patient direct-care staff who use skilled bathing and grooming techniques, leading to noticeable resident improvements in mood, hygiene, and sleep. Multiple families described warm, home-like communities, well-organized activities, and specific staff members and activity directors who stand out for engagement and care. Positive operational notes include low caregiver turnover in some units, mobile medical services (dentistry/podiatry), and a base-pricing policy that limits level-of-care price increases to an annual COLA rather than per-level surcharges.
However, the reviews show a strong pattern of polarization: while many families report excellent, attentive care and a high-quality living environment, others report serious problems that substantially affect trust. The most serious negative themes are clinical and safety-related. Several reviewers allege neglectful care, including failures in bathing and hygiene, dirty clothes, missed medications, and poor handling of dementia behaviors. There are multiple accounts of poor COVID-era practices, including inadequate isolation procedures and unsafe handling of infected residents. Medication management concerns appear repeatedly: reports range from medications being switched or overused to allegations of improper administration. Safety issues such as frequent falls, nighttime wandering (sometimes tied to non-locked doors), and oxygen equipment failures were also raised. These are not universal but numerous enough to be a notable pattern.
Communication, administration and billing are persistent areas of complaint. Many reviewers cite difficulty reaching or receiving timely information from nursing leadership and management, missing promised evaluations, or slow responses to family queries. Several reviews specifically call out rude or unprofessional behavior by administrative staff and report aggressive sales tactics during admissions. Billing concerns are severe for some families — allegations include unexpected add-on fees, ongoing charges after a resident's death, and mismatches between quoted and later-applied pricing. Price sensitivity is a cross-cutting theme: multiple reviewers mention substantial price hikes (examples given of increases from $4,200 to $5,800 per month) and extra charges for services that some expected to be included, leading to complaints of poor value or unaffordability.
Operational and housekeeping issues appear in a smaller but consistent minority of reviews. Laundry mistakes that ruined clothing, ink stains, or unclean dryers were specifically cited. A few reviewers noted occasional odors or cleanliness lapses, despite the majority calling the facility spotless. Staffing levels are another mixed theme: while many praise the staff as caring and attentive, others observe periods of understaffing that result in delayed care or a need to shout for assistance. Activity programming receives overall positive marks for variety and engagement, though a few families felt activity leadership was distracted by marketing duties or that engagement was lacking for some residents.
Taken together, the reviews portray a facility with strong design, services, and many caring staff who can and do deliver high-quality memory care and meaningful quality-of-life improvements for residents. At the same time, recurring and serious concerns about clinical consistency, safety incidents, pandemic response, medication management, administrative communication, and billing practices create risk and worry for other families. The result is a polarized set of experiences: for some families CERTUS is described as the best memory-care option they have encountered, while for others there are grounds for regret and strong warnings.
For prospective families, the most prominent takeaways are to verify specifics in writing: ask about exact fee structures and what is and is not included; request current staffing ratios and turnover data for the household where a loved one would live; inquire about infection-control policies and specifics of emergency/ER transport protocols; review medication-management processes and incident reporting procedures; ask how laundry and personal items are handled and documented; and seek references from current residents’ families, ideally in the same household. During a tour, observe direct-care interactions, ask to see activity calendars and examples of how individualized care plans are implemented, and confirm how administrative complaints are handled and escalated. This approach will help distinguish whether a prospective resident is likely to experience the highly praised compassionate care many describe or encounter the inconsistent and sometimes serious problems reported by others.
