Overall sentiment in the reviews is highly mixed and polarized: several reviewers report excellent, compassionate, and effective care, while a significant number recount serious lapses, neglect, and safety failures. Positive experiences emphasize a clean, well-kept facility with bright spaces, pleasant outdoor areas, private rooms, and staff who treat residents like family. Multiple reviews single out particular nurses, LVNs and CNAs by name for exceptional care, and some families report successful complex medical care and rehabilitation with on-time medications and personalized plans. Activity staff, cooks, and certain administrators receive praise for being kind, accommodating, and responsive.
However, a recurring and serious cluster of negative reports raises safety and quality-of-care concerns. Many reviewers describe inconsistent care between shifts and among staff — with night staff sometimes praised for diligence, while day staff are described as understaffed and failing to follow through. There are multiple reports of delayed or missing medications, medications crushed producing poor taste, and wrong or no medication being administered. Several accounts describe painful delays in pain medication and long waits for basic needs. Most alarmingly, reviewers report repeated falls without assistance, pressure injuries and bedsores, infected abscesses, and readmissions for pneumonia, UTIs, and other deterioration that families attribute to neglect. These are not isolated complaints: some residents reportedly required multiple ER visits and lengthy hospital admissions after being at the facility.
Care processes and resident dignity are another area of concern in the negative reviews. Incidents include residents left in urine for hours, not being showered, being left in wet clothing or without blankets overnight, and a nurse reportedly removing covers and never returning. There are accounts of wrong respiratory equipment and replacement equipment not being ordered, leading to health decline back to pre-hospital levels. Several reviewers describe a traumatizing experience and explicitly advise others to avoid the facility. Communication failures compound the problem: families report long phone holds, unanswered calls, poor Social Services coordination, and difficulty arranging visits or removals of residents. Theft or loss of personal belongings is a major issue for some — clothing, phones, and cash reportedly disappeared without records; families filed police reports and noted the facility lacked documented inventories of possessions.
Staffing and management receive mixed appraisals. Some reviews praise strong administrative leadership and attentive managers who plan and coordinate care, while others describe management as horrible and unresponsive, with staff 'just doing their job' and the building not kept up to date. The variability suggests that quality depends heavily on which staff members are on shift and which managers or clinicians are directly involved. Several reviews recommend family presence or an advocate to ensure adequate hydration, hygiene, and follow-through on care tasks. Short-staffing is cited as a root cause for many lapses, with multiple mentions that care declines as the resident’s condition worsens.
Facility, amenities, and food elicit divergent views. Many reviewers note the facility is clean, airy, and well-maintained with nice outdoor spaces and the ability to bring outside food; private rooms and quiet rest are positively highlighted. Activity programming and staff warmth are repeatedly mentioned by satisfied families. Conversely, some reviewers strongly criticize the food quality and describe the building as old, poorly updated, or superficially clean with 'fake friendliness.' Shared rooms and the lack of separate wings for short-term, dementia, and long-term care are called out as safety and infection-control concerns.
Safety, emergency response, and procedural reliability are specific red flags. Reports of emergency response taking an hour or more, wrong medications or equipment, and inadequate incident documentation indicate systemic process issues. Where the facility performed well, families noted timely medication, coordinated rehab plans, and good clinician involvement; where it failed, there were significant health consequences requiring hospitalization.
In summary, prospective residents and families should be aware that Maclay Healthcare Center can deliver excellent, compassionate care in many cases — particularly when specific, highly regarded nurses and CNAs are on duty and when management is engaged — but there are repeated, substantive reports of neglect, safety lapses, medication errors, missing belongings, and poor communication. The pattern suggests inconsistent quality tied to staffing levels and individual staff performance. If considering this facility, strongly recommended actions are: verify staffing levels and supervision during both day and night shifts, ask about processes for medication administration and inventory of personal items, request names of primary caregivers and documented care plans, maintain regular family advocacy/visits especially early in placement, and get clarity on emergency response protocols and incident reporting. These steps may help mitigate the documented risks while preserving the potential benefits some families experienced.
