Bonaventure Senior Living formerly Mountain West Retirement Corp. rips off its direct-care staff and its clients. Salem, Oregon

The turnover rate was incredibly high- by  the time I had been working there for a year, only two medication aides were still there who had been there at the time I was hired.  All of the caregivers on staff at that point had been hired since I was, and many of them had been there less than three months.  High turnover in a senior care facility translates directly to poor quality of care.  What it means for the residents is complete strangers providing the most intimate personal care on a regular basis.  In fact, the high turnover was the number one complaint I heard from the residents while I worked at High Desert.  On top of that, the caregiving staff was inadequately trained.  Training consisted of watching a marketing video- the message of which was essentially "treat the residents well so they'll recommend your facility to their friends"- and then spending one or two shifts shadowing another staff member, often one who had been working there a month or two and who was trained in the exact same fasion.  It was essentially the blind leading the blind.

There were many factors contributing to the high turnover rate, in addition to the woefully inadequate training regimen.  

First, the work environment was somewhat hostile.  When direct care staff was doing a good job, they rarely heard about it.  But as soon as someone made a mistake, they were called into the administrator's office, where they were blamed for their error and threatened with disciplinary action.  In many cases, people were disciplined for doing the wrong thing because they were never properly trained to do things the right way.  In other cases, the administration seemed to take inadequate action in regard to more serious infractions.  In one instance, a woman working the overnight shift admitted guilt to numerous accusations of resident neglect and abuse levied against her by a co-worker (including turning off residents' call-lights without actually checking on the residents themselves, and pouring water out of the containers sitting on residents' night stands so she wouldn't have to change their incontinence pads as often).  They weren't going to fire her until the co-worker that levied the complaint threatened to quit if they didn't.

Payroll was a constant problem.  Virtually every two weeks, someone's paycheck came up short, often by hundreds of dollars.  I was shorted $200 on my paycheck one time, and when I pointed it out to management they asked if it was OK if they added it to my next paycheck.  Not being in the business of lending money at 0.0% interest to my employer, I told them it was not OK, and they told me they'd see what they could do.  I hounded them daily, and was daily given excuses that they payroll department was backed up, and they'd pay me as soon as possible.  They finally cut me a check two weeks later.  My wait was comparatively short.  A co-worker of mine said she waited about two months to get paid about $500 after she used her accrued PTO to take a vacation.

The facility was regularly understaffed.  As a medication aide, I would work along side two caregivers.  During much of my time there, this was not enough to adequately meet the needs of the forty or so residents.  Each resident had a bracelet with a button on it that they could press while in their room in order to alert staff that they needed assistance.  In the evening, as I was passing bedtime medications and the caregivers were helping numerous residents with their bedtime routine, we'd often have so many calls to answer at once between the three of us that it might take up to 45 minutes to get to an individual resident, something they would regularly and understandably get upset about.  When I brought it up to management, they simply said that their census was too low to add another caregiver to my shift. So instead of basing staffing on the needs of their residents, Mountain West (Bonaventure) simply based it on how much money was coming in.  This was clearly a self-perpetuating problem, since anyone who came in for a tour could see that staff was over-worked, and would thus be less likely to move their loved-ones into the facility, which contribued to the low census at our facility.

As a result of the low census, management would routinely move residents into High Desert who required a higher level of care than an assisted living facility can provide.  For example, they moved in one resident who had dementia severe enough that he was at risk of getting lost if he went out of the facility on his own.  Not being a memory-care facility, High Desert was not set up to lock the residents in, so the care staff was told that we were responsible for preventing him from leaving, despite the fact that there were often only three staff-members on duty in a facility with two floors, three wings, and about five different exits to the outside.  This tendancy for management to stretch the level of care that we provided beyond the bounds of an assisted living of course contributed to staff feeling overworked and overwhelmed, which contributed to the high turnover rate.

And the high turnover rate was a self-perpetuating problem in and of itself.  Because of the general dissatisfaction of the staff, people rarely put in two weeks notice when they quit.  In fact, the most common method of resignation among medication aides and caregivers was the no-call, no-show.  This meant that those of us who were committed to caring for the residents often had to unexpectedly stay and work a double.  On several occasions I had to stay on until 6 am when I was expecting to leave at 10pm.

So, staff at High Desert Assisted Living was regularly under-trained, overworked, ripped off on payday, and generally made to feel completely devalued by our employer.  All for less than $10, and sometimes even less than $9 an hour.  And over the course of the year working there, despite being told when I was hiredthat I would be eligable for a performance review and a raise after three months, I didn't actually recieve one until I had been there a year.  And by that I mean I didn't recieve a performance review until after a year.  Despite providing excellent care, and regularly coming in to cover extra shifts, I didn't even have the opportunity to get a raise until after twelve months.  I did recieve a healthcare package, but I would have been completely out of luck if I'd been seriously injured or become seriously ill, because there was a low annual limit on the amount of money the insurance company would spend on medical care.  It was the single worst healthcare plan I've ever signed up for at any job.

It is insane to expect that residents could possibly recieve the high-quality care they deserve in the environment present at High Desert Assisted Living.  The problems present there are evidence of either incompetence or totall callousness- or both- on the part of Bonaventure's upper management.  I feel that I should warn everybody who is looking to place their loved-ones in residential care, and everyone looking for work in a senior-care facility, to avoid Bonaventure Senior Living at all costs.