Overall sentiment: The reviews for Maplewood Rehabilitation Center are highly polarized but lean heavily toward serious concerns. While a meaningful subset of reviewers describe compassionate caregivers, effective therapy services, and a supportive social work team, a large number of reviews report systemic failures in staffing, cleanliness, clinical oversight, safety, and management accountability. The result is a mixed picture where positive, sometimes excellent, pockets of care exist alongside repeated and severe negative incidents.
Care quality and clinical oversight: A dominant theme is inconsistent and at times dangerously poor medical care. Multiple reviewers report medication errors, long delays in medication administration, poor medication tracking, and even alleged misrepresentation of medications. Several accounts note lack of an on-site physician or limited doctor availability, missed labs or orders, ignored infections and wounds, and delayed or missing therapy. There are multiple reports that inadequate care directly led to hospital readmissions or worse. Conversely, a significant number of reviewers praise therapy staff (PT/OT) and describe well-coordinated rehab for some patients — illustrating extreme variability in clinical delivery depending on timing, staffing, or individual clinicians.
Staffing, responsiveness, and behavior: Understaffing and slow response times to call lights are among the most frequently reported problems. Families describe long waits for assistance (sometimes 20–30+ minutes or hours), residents left unattended, and call buttons ignored. High staff turnover and reliance on inexperienced or part-time staff are recurring issues. Reviewers paint a split picture of personnel: many name caregivers as kind, compassionate, and dedicated (including several who were singled out by name for praise), while others describe rude, unprofessional, or even abusive aides and nurses. This inconsistency contributes to a perception that quality depends largely on which individuals are on duty and whether family presence influences care.
Facilities, cleanliness, and safety: Numerous reviews describe significant cleanliness and maintenance problems — filthy rooms, stained and torn linens, cobwebs, hair, peeling paint, pest problems (flies/gnats), and items such as razor blades or feces left unattended. Some report rooms not cleaned for days, soiled trays, and general sanitation lapses that raise infection-control concerns. The building itself is described by multiple reviewers as dated and poorly maintained (not updated since the 1980s in some accounts), though a subset of reviewers report spacious private rooms and inviting common areas. Safety incidents are also reported: falls poorly managed, rough transfers, wandering residents, and instances where emergencies were not promptly addressed.
Dining and daily living services: Food quality and dining service receive mixed but mostly negative feedback. Common complaints include cold meals, poor food choices (e.g., overprocessed proteins, canned fruit, jello in disposable containers), missing utensils, and inconsistent meal schedules (breakfast not served or served cold). However, some reviewers praise home-cooked meals and describe food as top-shelf — again emphasizing variability.
Activities and therapy programming: Activity offerings are highlighted positively by a number of families: regular group events, bingo, off-campus outings, and an engaged activities team. Therapy (PT/OT) also earns praise in many reviews for effective rehabilitation and coordination, especially in cases involving prosthetics. Still, other reviewers report inadequate or billed-but-not-delivered therapy services, suggesting inconsistent program fidelity and occasional fraudulent billing.
Management, billing, and accountability: A recurring complaint involves management response and accountability. Families report unresponsiveness to complaints, lack of corrective action, and in some cases alleged fraudulent billing for services not rendered. There are reports of staff theft and missing money or belongings, poor phone communication from administration, and instances where families felt pressured about payment. A number of reviewers urge regulatory reporting and administrative change, with some stating management has been unresponsive even when serious safety or care issues were raised.
Patterns and notable contrasts: The reviews reveal a clear pattern of variability: some residents received excellent, compassionate care with strong therapy outcomes and good communication, while others experienced neglect, dangerous lapses, and poor sanitation. Positive reports often single out individual staff members (nurses, CNAs, social workers, therapists) who went above and beyond. Negative reports, however, describe systemic failings — understaffing, billing irregularities, infection control problems, and management inertia — that place residents at risk.
Conclusion and implications for families: Prospective families should be cautious and perform thorough, recent checks before choosing Maplewood. Key due diligence items include in-person visits at different times of day, asking for current staffing levels and med administration policies, requesting documentation of therapy schedules and billing, checking recent inspection reports, and confirming infection-control procedures. Families who value specific strengths (e.g., skilled therapists or particular compassionate staff) may find good experiences, but the frequency and severity of the negative reports — particularly around medication errors, neglected care, sanitation, and management accountability — represent serious red flags that warrant careful investigation and monitoring if placing a loved one here.
