These reviews present a strongly mixed but overall favorable picture of Five Star Premier Residences of Hollywood, with frequent praise for the campus, social life, dining and many individual staff members, alongside repeated and serious concerns about staffing levels and consistency of clinical care in certain units — particularly assisted living and memory care.
On the positive side, reviewers repeatedly describe the property as resort-like: attractive landscaping, fountains, renovated common areas, heated pools, and well-kept grounds recur across comments. Many residents and families praise spacious apartments (studios to two-bedrooms) with balconies and in-room kitchens, and they mention weekly housekeeping, covered parking and convenient location near shopping and family. The community offers a broad activity program — exercise classes, choir, crafts, movies, live entertainment multiple times a week, themed parties and frequent outings — which several reviewers credit with reducing loneliness and improving resident quality of life. Multiple reviews single out the sales and transition staff (several names appear often) as compassionate and thorough, and many families reported smooth move-ins and strong support through transitions and bereavement.
Staff and caregiving perceptions are a central, divergent theme. A large number of reviews enthusiastically praise staff — CNAs, dining staff, maintenance and specific nurses and administrators — describing them as warm, caring, responsive, and hands-on. Several family members described the staff as lifesavers during storms and emergencies, highlighting the facility’s strong hurricane preparedness (generators, backup plans, staff who stayed on-site) and clear communication with families. Conversely, another recurring set of reviews raises serious concerns about staffing shortages, poor responsiveness, inconsistent medication administration, and neglectful incidents (night-check inconsistency, falls, residents reportedly left in urine for hours). These negative accounts are particularly concentrated in accounts of assisted living and memory care, while independent living is more consistently praised. That split suggests variability by unit and possibly by staff on duty or by changes over time.
Memory care and assisted living draw mixed — often critical — comments. Multiple reviewers explicitly call the Alzheimer’s/memory-care programming “dismal,” cite a lack of emotional and social engagement for dementia residents, and describe inadequate supervision and training. At the same time, some families praise individual memory-care staff as adept and compassionate, indicating that quality can be variable and may depend heavily on the specific caregivers and managers assigned. Related clinical/operational concerns include inconsistent medication management (and an extra fee for medication administration that some reviewers criticized), limited visibility of nurses/CNAs on the floor, and reports of poor communication around clinical issues. These contrasts point to uneven care delivery rather than uniformly poor clinical oversight.
Dining and housekeeping elicit polarized responses. Many reviewers praise the food — some credit a Culinary Institute–trained chef, describe made-to-order meals, and celebrate special event dining. Others find meals bland, cold or inedible, and several mention that lunch service or flexibility in meal schedules is limited. Housekeeping and cleanliness are likewise mixed: many describe an immaculate, beautifully renovated campus with quick maintenance fixes, while others report dirty hallway bathrooms, strong odors on the first floor, bags of laundry/trash left in corridors, and disruptive renovation-related mess. Several reviewers note maintenance issues such as recurring air-conditioning leaks and whirlpool upkeep problems, though many also report timely maintenance responses.
Management, pricing and operational stability are other recurrent themes. Multiple positive reviews applaud specific managers and administrators for responsiveness, safety planning, and compassionate leadership; several families highlighted excellent disaster response during Hurricane Irma. Yet a number of reviews point to management and ownership changes that coincide with declines in quality, staff morale issues, alleged mistreatment of employees, and inconsistency in policies and accountability. Cost is a frequent concern: the community is described as upscale and expensive with regular annual increases (some reviewers mention increases approaching 5%), extra fees (e.g., medication administration), and variability in pricing depending on view and floor. For many families the price is justified by atmosphere and service; for others affordability is a limiting factor.
Taken together, the reviews suggest a facility with substantial strengths — an attractive, activity-rich campus, many caring staff members, strong independent-living offerings, and robust emergency preparedness — but also with notable and recurring weaknesses around staffing consistency, clinical oversight in assisted/memory care, cleanliness variability in certain areas, and cost transparency. The overall pattern is one of high variability: many residents and families are very satisfied and recommend the community, while a smaller but vocal group reports serious lapses in care and facility management. Prospective residents and families should tour multiple times (including evenings/overnight if possible), ask targeted questions about staff-to-resident ratios, night checks and fall history, medication administration policies and fees, recent ownership/management changes, and measures taken to address odors/cleanliness and specific maintenance issues. Also ask for specifics about memory-care staffing, training, and programming, since the reviews indicate this is the area with the greatest inconsistency in experience.
