Notre Dame Long Term Care Ctr

Pros

• Notre Dame is undoubtedly one of the best nursing homes in Worcester County.
• Their staff is caring, friendly, reliable, and professional, prioritizing the care and comfort of every resident.
• The place is top notch; the staff, facility, and level of care are incredible, like a 5-star hotel.
• The meal plan at Notre Dame is impressive, offering a great variety of options for every meal, including ice creams.
• Their linen, towels, and face cloths are incredibly soft.
• Notre Dame Rehab has been the best experience by far, with staff treating the whole person and kindness and caring making difficult situations more manageable.
• The campus is beautiful and peaceful, with friendly, happy staff and residents.
• The CNAs are the backbone of Notre Dame's exceptional care.
• The staff engage with residents and ensure that they feel loved and valued.
• They truly understand the importance of showing utmost respect and dignity to residents.
• The medical treatment has been outstanding.
• The facility is top notch and the care is excellent.

Cons

• The rehab was overcrowded due to ongoing renovations, with unusable rooms and wheelchairs blocking doorways, like a fire code violation.
• Meals were crowded and rushed, served on paper plates with plastic utensils, unsuitable for residents with tremors.
• The resident barely ate and lost a significant amount of weight.
• Summer activities were always held outside regardless of heat; no indoor alternatives were offered.
• Staffing shortages caused shower days to be skipped and led to long 30-minute (or more) waits after a call button was pressed.
• There was inexcusably poor communication between ND LTC and the du Lac programs, undermining discharge planning.
• The rehab discontinued all PT/OT therapy without informing the family.
• Staff gave mixed messages about discharge, effectively leaving the resident in limbo between the rehab and Harmony.
• The Harmony dining experience suggested residents were treated as second-class citizens, with no real menu and menus ripped away when attempted to order.
• Laundry operations were a mess, with missing hangers and closets overstuffed with others' hangers.
• The facility only offered self-administered medication management, forcing families to seek other facilities for meds that needed changes (crushing meds, eye drops, etc.).
• Overall, the rehab did not live up to what was promised and disrupted discharge planning rather than simplifying it.

Review

Notre Dame du Lac (ND) offers two distinct living and care environments that are often discussed together by families: an assisted living memory-care area called Harmony, and a separate on-site rehab unit that ND labels its Long-Term Care (LTC) building. The experiences represented here come from families whose loved ones moved between these two settings during hospital recoveries and transitions. Taken as a whole, the reviews paint a picture of a facility with remarkable strengths in some areas - especially the friendliness and dedication of individual staff, the cleanliness and beauty of the campus, and the overall reputation for compassionate care - while also revealing serious frustrations tied to logistics, communication, and day-to-day operations during periods of renovation and staffing strain.

Several reviews emphasize a strong emotional core: many residents and families describe staff as caring, respectful, and genuinely committed to residents' dignity and comfort. In particular, reviewers repeatedly praise CNAs and nursing teams for their kindness, reliability, and personal engagement with residents. Positive comments describe Notre Dame as a loving, welcoming community where residents feel valued and treated with respect. The campus is often described with warmth - beautiful grounds, a peaceful atmosphere, and a sense that, when things run smoothly, the facility can feel like a five-star environment with attentive care, a broad array of activities, and responsive staff.

Yet the other side of the story is equally persistent and specific. During a hospital-to-rehab transition and even after, several families report significant operational and logistical challenges. A central thread concerns the LTC rehab unit during a prolonged construction period that made the space feel cramped and overcrowded. Reviewers describe hallways blocked by wheelchairs, dining areas crowded to the point of discomfort, and a general sense that rooms and common areas were unusable or unsafe at times. The physical layout and capacity strains appear to have affected daily routines, including mealtime experiences, which were described as rushed and crowded. Meals in the LTC may be served on disposable paper plates with plastic utensils, a choice that is particularly problematic for residents with Parkinson's or other tremor-related challenges, where OT recommendations often include weighted utensils to aid self-feeding. A claim is made that this mismatch between equipment and needs contributed to weight loss for a resident during rehab.

The dining experience is cited repeatedly as incongruent with the expectations set by ND's marketing. Families report that Harmony residents were sometimes soused into a different dining reality than other residents: no menu was available in Harmony, and when residents attempted to request items off a menu, staff reportedly restricted or stopped them, explaining the menu was for traditional residents rather than Harmony. The impression of a two-tier system - where Harmony residents are treated as second-class in some contexts despite paying a premium - appears in several anecdotes, from dining to laundry to everyday routines. Laundry issues are another concrete frustration: misplaced or missing hangers, overstuffed closets with others' belongings, and general disorganization were repeatedly noted as adding to the sense that basic daily tasks were not consistently managed.

Therapy and discharge planning emerged as particularly problematic in the stories about the LTC rehab. Several families describe a hopeful trajectory where their loved one was regaining mobility and preparing to return to Harmony, only to encounter abrupt changes. In at least one instance, staff indicated a discharge date and readiness to move back to Harmony, but then, just days before the plan was executed, the LTC team announced they could not admit the resident back to Harmony due to ongoing renovations. The family was left waiting without a firm timeline, while the resident's therapy was discontinued without clear communication. The impression left is that the LTC unit expected the resident to stay indefinitely in rehab, even though they were no longer receiving active therapy and Harmony itself was unavailable due to construction. This produced a profound sense of confusion, frustration, and a breakdown in discharge planning.

Communication gaps appear as a consistent theme across reviews. Families describe slow or unclear communication between the LTC rehab team and Harmony staff, which undermined the supposed benefit of having on-site rehab facilitating smoother transitions. In some cases, families were told one thing by one team and something different by another, leading to a feeling that the system was not aligned around the resident's best interests. There are also reports of medical and routine communication failures - such as a failure to inform families about a roommate's serious illness or a lack of timely updates about a resident's condition - culminating in a broader sense of disengagement during vulnerable periods.

There are also clear warnings about the reliability of staffing and the consistency of daily operations. Reviewers repeatedly mention staffing shortages as a regular challenge, which contributed to long waits for basic assistance, such as a 30-minute or longer response time after pressing a call button, or missed shower days. Transportation arrangements for doctor appointments were criticized in at least one case, with appointments repeatedly canceled or made difficult to attend, creating additional stress for families and residents who were trying to maintain medical continuity.

Paradoxically, the very positive testimonials about ND's facilities - praising the campus, the quality of care, and the warmth of staff - sit alongside experiences that describe the marketing not fully aligning with the day-to-day realities in the rehab and Harmony settings during renovation and staffing pressures. Some reviewers emphasize that the care and medical treatment can be outstanding when things run smoothly, with patients benefiting from attentive clinicians and a supportive environment. Others warn prospective families to temper expectations, noting that renovations, crowding, and inconsistent policies can undermine the experience, particularly for residents with higher care needs, mobility limitations, or cognitive challenges.

In closing, Notre Dame du Lac's story, as reflected in these reviews, is one of contrasts. The campus and many individual caregivers are celebrated for their compassion, professionalism, and the dignified treatment residents receive. The facility's strengths - cleanliness, aesthetic appeal, a caring nursing staff, and a robust sense of community - are repeatedly highlighted as reasons families trust ND with the care of their loved ones. At the same time, the LTC rehab unit's on-site operations during renovation, internal coordination between rehab and Harmony, menu and dining disparities, limited medication management options, and persistent staffing shortages create significant downsides that hamper the overall experience for families navigating transitions. Prospective families may find ND to be a place of genuine warmth and high-quality clinical care, but they should also be prepared for the possibility of logistical hurdles, communication gaps, and inconsistencies in daily operations, especially during periods of construction and epidemic-wide staffing pressures.

Pharmacies

• Sudbury Pharmacy (1.1 miles)
• CVS Pharmacy (1.3 miles)
• CVS Pharmacy (2.5 miles)
• CVS Pharmacy (3.3 miles)
• Walgreens (3.7 miles)
• CVS Pharmacy (4.6 miles)
• Walgreens (4.8 miles)

Cafes

• Karma Coffee (1.3 miles)
• Panera Bread (4.8 miles)
• Starbucks (5 miles)
• Starbucks (6.4 miles)
• Haute Coffee (6.7 miles)
• Starbucks (7.3 miles)
• Donelans cafe (8 miles)

Physicians

• Post Road Pediatrics (1.6 miles)
• Framingham Pediatrics (4.7 miles)
• New England Eye Center - Framingham (4.8 miles)
• Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates (5.9 miles)
• Jacob Goldberg (5.9 miles)
• Medical Associates of Greater Boston PC (6.4 miles)
• Charles River Medical Associates Radiology (7 miles)

Restaurants

• Longfellow's Wayside Inn (3.1 miles)
• Verrill Farm (4 miles)
• Chick-Fil-A (4.9 miles)
• KFC (5.1 miles)
• Subway (5.2 miles)
• Dave & Buster's (5.3 miles)
• The Cheesecake Factory (5.3 miles)

Places of Worship

• Temple Shir Tikva (3.5 miles)
• St Bridget's Church & School (5.2 miles)
• Parish of the Messiah (9 miles)

Transportation

• Framingham Logan Express (4.9 miles)
• South Acton Mbta Commuter Rail Station (6.4 miles)
• MBTA Riverside Station (8.6 miles)
• Hanscom Field (BED) (8.8 miles)

Theaters

• AMC Framingham 16 (5 miles)

Hospitals

• Emerson Hospital - Main Campus (5.7 miles)
• Newton-Wellesley Hospital (9.1 miles)

Parks

• Cushing Memorial Park (6.1 miles)
• Cat Rock Park (6.8 miles)
• Natick Common (7.1 miles)
• Prospect Hill Park (8.4 miles)