Placing a family member in a memory care or assisted living community is one of the most profoundly difficult acts of love. You spend weeks, perhaps months, researching the best options, touring buildings, and trusting that the professionals you choose will treat your loved one with the same dignity and respect that you would.
But what happens when something feels wrong?
Perhaps your mother looks unkempt when you visit, your father has unexplained bruising, or the staff simply cannot answer your basic questions about their daily routine. If you are experiencing a sinking feeling that your loved one is not receiving the care they deserve, you are not alone, and you do not have to accept it.
At Sundara Senior Living in Round Rock, Texas, we believe that transparency and advocacy are the cornerstones of high-quality dementia care. Unfortunately, the sheer size of the corporate senior living industry means that many families feel lost in the shuffle when they try to raise concerns. If you are worried about the care your loved one is receiving in a Texas facility, this guide will walk you through your rights, how to escalate a Texas long term care ombudsman complaint, and the formal steps you can take to protect your family member.
Trusting Your Gut: Recognizing the Signs of Substandard Care
When a loved one is living with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia, they often lose the ability to accurately communicate their needs, pain, or distress. Because they cannot tell you if they are being neglected, caregivers must rely heavily on observation.
Do not ignore your intuition. If a large corporate facility feels “off,” it likely is. Here are the most common red flags of neglect or substandard care:
- Unexplained Physical Injuries: Frequent bruising, skin tears, or unexplained falls. While falls can happen in memory care, a facility should always have an incident report and a clear explanation of how it occurred and what is being done to prevent it.
- Poor Personal Hygiene: Unbrushed teeth, unwashed hair, overgrown fingernails, or the resident wearing soiled clothing.
- Sudden Weight Loss or Dehydration: Meals being left uneaten without staff intervention, or a lack of accessible drinking water in the resident’s room.
- Frequent Behavioral Changes: Sudden, severe withdrawal, unusual fearfulness around specific staff members, or extreme agitation that is out of character for their stage of dementia.
- Unanswered Call Bells and Staff Absence: Waiting an unreasonable amount of time for a response to a call button, or frequently visiting and finding no staff members present in the common areas.
- High Staff Turnover: Seeing different, unfamiliar faces every time you visit. Consistency is critical for memory care; a revolving door of staff often indicates poor management and leads directly to gaps in care.
Learn more about what to look for when touring a memory care community.
Step 1: Start with Facility Administration (and the Problem with Corporate Care)
If the issue is non-life-threatening, the first step is always to bring your concerns to the facility’s administration. Request a formal, in-person meeting with the Executive Director or the Director of Nursing. Bring written documentation of your concerns, including dates, times, and specific observations.
The Corporate Runaround: This is often where families run into the wall of corporate senior living. In massive facilities owned by national conglomerates, the Executive Director may be managing upwards of 100 residents and dealing with chronic staff shortages. Your complaint may be met with corporate talking points, deflected to a regional manager in another state, or simply lost in bureaucratic paperwork. You might leave the meeting feeling unheard, and worse, see no actual changes in your loved one’s daily care.
If speaking to the administration does not result in immediate, sustained improvement, it is time to escalate the issue to state advocates.
Step 2: The Texas Long-Term Care Ombudsman: Your Free Advocate
Many families are completely unaware that they have a dedicated, state-funded advocate available to them. A Long-Term Care (LTC) Ombudsman is an independent advocate for the rights of residents living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
What Does an Ombudsman Do?
An ombudsman is completely independent of the Texas Health and Human Services system and the facility itself. Their entire job is to represent the resident’s best interests. They are trained to:
- Listen to your concerns confidentially.
- Investigate issues related to poor quality of care, inadequate hygiene, improper discharge, or violations of resident rights.
- Act as a neutral mediator between the family, the resident, and the facility administration to resolve problems.
- Offer ideas, options, and systemic solutions to improve the resident’s quality of life.
How to Initiate a Texas Long Term Care Ombudsman Complaint
If you are hitting a brick wall with facility management, involving an ombudsman is an excellent next step. Because they are intimately familiar with state regulations, their presence alone often forces a facility to take your concerns seriously.
Resource Citation: To find your local representative and file a Texas long term care ombudsman complaint, you can contact the Texas Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program directly:
- Phone: 1-800-252-2412 (Toll-free, statewide)
- Cost: Free of charge and completely confidential.
Step 3: Filing a Formal Complaint with Texas HHSC
If an ombudsman cannot resolve the issue, or if you suspect severe neglect, abuse, or regulatory violations, you must file a formal complaint with the state.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) is the governing body that licenses, inspects, and regulates all assisted living and memory care facilities in the state. Unlike an ombudsman (who mediates), the HHSC acts as an investigator and enforcer. If they find a facility is violating care standards, they can issue fines, mandate corrective action plans, or even revoke the facility’s license.
How to File an HHSC Complaint Intake
When filing a complaint, be prepared to provide as much detailed information as possible. You will need the facility’s name and address, the specific dates and times of the incidents, the names of involved staff members, and a clear description of the negative outcomes affecting your loved one.
You can file a formal complaint with the Texas HHSC Complaint and Incident Intake through several channels:
- Phone: Call the toll-free complaint hotline at 1-800-458-9858. Agents are available Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
- Online: You can submit a complaint 24/7 through the Texas Unified Licensure Information Portal (TULIP) on the HHS website.
- Confidentiality: HHSC keeps your name confidential to protect your loved one from retaliation, though you can choose to remain completely anonymous (note: if you choose to be anonymous, HHSC cannot follow up with you regarding the investigation results).
Why Facility Size Matters: The Sundara Senior Living Difference
If you are currently fighting a massive corporate facility just to get your loved one a glass of water or a clean shirt, you are likely feeling exhausted and defeated. It shouldn’t be this hard. And it doesn’t have to be.
The root cause of most facility complaints—unanswered calls, poor hygiene, ignored dietary needs, and severe lack of communication—stems from the business model itself. Most assisted living and memory care communities are owned by large, out-of-state corporations. They have massive overhead, hundreds of residents, and a constantly rotating staff. In those environments, care becomes entirely impersonal.
Sundara Senior Living was created by three local individuals who wanted to bring humanity back to memory care. Located right here in Round Rock, Texas, we are a hyper-local, brick-and-mortar boutique community designed specifically—and exclusively—for memory care.
We cap our community at just 16 beds. We believe with our whole hearts that living in a smaller, highly controlled environment actively reduces the symptoms of dementia.
When you choose Sundara, you are not choosing a corporation; you are choosing a family. Because we are locally owned and operated, there is no corporate ladder to climb if you have a question. The same owner you speak with on the phone during your very first inquiry is often the exact same person standing in the hallway, directly caring for your family member.
Here is how our boutique model prevents the common complaints found in large facilities:
- Exceptional Oversight: With only 16 residents, nobody slips through the cracks. We notice the moment a resident’s appetite changes, their mood shifts, or they need a little extra help with hygiene.
- Consistent, Loving Caregivers: We don’t rely on a revolving door of agency staff. Our residents see deeply familiar faces every single day, fostering true trust and emotional security.
- Direct Access to Ownership: You will never have to wait days for a “regional manager” to return your call. We are on-site, hands-on, and directly accountable to you and your loved one.
- A True Home Environment: From our private and semi-private rooms to our quiet, calming common areas, we provide high-quality care that feels like a home, not a hospital.
Explore our memory care community here.
Find Compassionate Memory Care in Round Rock, Texas
You shouldn’t have to hire a state ombudsman just to ensure your loved one is treated with basic human dignity. If your current facility is failing your family, or if you are beginning your search and want to avoid the pitfalls of corporate senior living, we invite you to experience the Sundara difference.
Your loved one deserves high-quality, deeply personal, home-like care. And you deserve peace of mind.
Contact Sundara Senior Living today. Let us show you how a smaller, boutique memory care environment in Round Rock can provide the safe, loving community your family deserves.