Overall sentiment: Reviews of Paramus Veterans Memorial Home are sharply mixed, with a strongly polarized picture emerging. A sizable portion of reviewers praise the staff, nursing care, cleanliness, activities, and veteran-focused services, describing the home as a caring, comfortable place that treats residents with respect. Conversely, a significant number of reviewers report serious problems including understaffing, neglect, unsanitary conditions, poor facility maintenance, and safety or management failures. These divergent accounts suggest inconsistent experiences that vary by unit, shift, time period, or individual expectations.
Care quality and staff: One of the most frequent and striking themes is variability in staff performance and care quality. Many reviews describe staff as kind, professional, respectful and even ‘‘saints’’ — with specific praise for CNAs, nurses, doctors and aides, and several reports of strong, attentive nursing teams. These reviewers note dignity and empathy, consistent updates to families, and exceptional dementia care in some units. At the same time, other reviewers describe chronic short staffing, slow call responses (20–30 minute waits cited), neglect, unresponsiveness, and outright hostile or cold behavior from some employees. More serious allegations also appear in the negative reports: theft from rooms, staff dishonesty, and even accusations of drugging residents. Communication problems are reported too, including language barriers (staff not speaking good English) and difficulty getting RN reports by phone.
Facilities and cleanliness: Opinions about the physical plant are mixed but skew toward concerns about aging infrastructure. Positive accounts describe clean, roomy units and well-kept areas; negative reviews emphasize an old, dated facility with worn furniture, sticky or dirty floors, and persistent urine odors. Bathrooms are a frequent point of criticism — some describe shared bathrooms (up to four residents sharing), and others call resident bathrooms “horrible.” Infection control and airborne illness concerns are raised by several reviewers, who worry about sanitation and the potential for disease spread in an older building.
Dining and activities: Recreational programming and dining receive mostly favorable mentions. Multiple reviewers note a robust schedule of activities — table tennis, checkers, dance, music, bingo, movies, rec-room games, garden outings, and bus trips to malls — that make the home suitable especially for residents who are less mobile or who enjoy group activities. Meals receive mixed but often positive feedback: several reviewers call the cooks very good and describe the food as good or excellent, while others report that food is terrible or that residents’ special dietary needs (e.g., non-pureed meals) are not being met, which in some cases has been linked to weight loss or worsening health.
Management, communication, and admissions: A subset of reviews praises management communication — weekly CEO updates and consistent family updates are cited as strengths. The facility’s veteran-focused mission and dedicated departments are also appreciated by families who want a veteran-centric environment. However, many negative reviews recount difficulties with admissions (denials, long waits for decisions, and perceived lack of compassion, particularly for applicants with dementia), poor responsiveness from management in addressing complaints, and inconsistent or dismissive attitudes toward families. These contradictory reports indicate that management communication may be strong in some instances and lacking in others.
Safety, neglect, and staffing concerns: Several reviewers describe worrying safety incidents and consequences attributed to staffing shortages and inadequate supervision — falls leading to wheelchair dependence, mobility decline from prolonged restraint in bed chairs, weight loss related to restrictive feeding practices, and perceived overall health decline. Some accounts use very strong language (‘‘unmitigated nightmare,’’ ‘‘sickening neglect’’) while others explicitly credit the staff with saving or improving their loved ones’ health. The existence of both extremes indicates a high degree of inconsistency in resident outcomes and suggests that risk to residents may depend heavily on when and where care is delivered within the facility.
Patterns and implications: The reviews collectively paint a facility that provides excellent care and a good environment for many residents, particularly in certain units or under particular staff teams, but that also suffers from systemic issues that can produce very poor outcomes for others. The most common negative patterns are understaffing, inconsistent staff competence or attitudes, aging physical plant and sanitation problems, and challenges around admissions or dementia care policies. Positive patterns include strong veteran-oriented programming, engaged recreational offerings, and many individual staff members and teams repeatedly praised for compassion and professionalism.
Takeaway for prospective families: Prospective residents and families should be aware of both the strong positives and the serious negatives reported. When evaluating this facility, consider touring multiple units at different times of day, asking for current staffing ratios and RN availability, requesting recent state inspection and infection-control reports, inquiring about bathroom arrangements and remodeling plans, probing dementia admission policies and behavioral-handling procedures, and asking for references from current families. Also ask about call response times, how complaints are handled, and whether regular administrative updates (such as the cited weekly CEO updates) are currently active. Given the polarized reviews, on-site observation and specific, documentation-backed questions will be essential to assess whether Paramus Veterans Memorial Home will meet a particular resident’s needs and safety requirements.
