Overall impression: Reviews for Daughters of Israel Home are strongly polarized. A substantial number of reviewers praise the facility for comfortable rooms, pleasant grounds, robust activity programming, kosher dining options, and compassionate individual staff members and clinicians. At the same time, an equally significant set of reviews describe systemic problems: understaffing, inconsistent clinical care, hygiene and infection-control failures, safety incidents, and management shortcomings. The net picture is of a large facility with pockets of high-quality service and amenities but persistent and serious variability in care quality and operational oversight.
Care quality and clinical concerns: Multiple reviews describe haphazard nursing care, inadequate clinical assessments, and inconsistency in therapy services. While some families report superb medical clinicians and productive rehabilitation, others reported infections, bedsores, and complications attributed to improper care. Specific alarming clinical issues include reports of nurses unable to perform assessments, missing admission diagnostic records, and multiple accounts of infection control lapses such as glove reuse across patients and lack of observed hand washing. There are descriptions of late or missed feedings, dirty PEG tubes, and subsequent infections that some families link to the facility’s practices. These clinical failures, when they occur, have led to hospital transfers and in at least a few cases repeated emergency calls.
Staffing, responsiveness, and professionalism: Staffing levels and staff conduct emerge as a major theme of variability. Many reviews praise individual aides, nurses, and medical staff as kind, accommodating, and attentive, with families noting around-the-clock care in some units and strong dementia-wing leadership. Conversely, a large number of reports describe understaffing, long wait times for assistance, delayed responses to call bells, and nursing staff who primarily dispense medications without comprehensive assessments. Several reviews also recount rude or unprofessional behavior by CNAs or nurses and claims of unethical treatment of staff and residents. This inconsistency suggests that experience may depend heavily on the unit, shift, or specific staff on duty.
Cleanliness, safety, and environment: Comments about physical environment are mixed. Positive reports note clean, homey rooms, private rooms, wheelchair accessibility, and good laundry service in some cases. Negative reports describe filthy rooms and bathrooms, soiled garments, missing sheets, dirty trays, and general poor hygiene. Safety concerns are frequent in the negative reviews: falls without timely medical examination, lost personal items (for example hearing aids), multiple 911 calls for one resident, and at least one account alleging perceived hastening of death. These are serious red flags that families should probe further when considering placement.
Dining, amenities, and activities: The facility’s amenities and programming receive similarly mixed feedback. Many reviewers appreciate the social environment, frequent activities (music, card games, events), kosher meals, family rooms, barber, and transportation services. Laundry and other support services are described as excellent by some. However, multiple reviewers report dining problems—meals served cold or stale, dirty or late trays, water pitchers not replenished, and inadequate assistance in the dining room—which directly affect resident nutrition and satisfaction. Activity programming appears robust in several accounts but limited in others, again indicating variability by unit or time.
Management and organizational issues: Several reviews cite management problems including lack of clinical social work services, poor oversight, and inconsistent communication. Instances of no admission diagnostics or patient records, an isolation room left open without signage, and unaddressed safety/infection-control issues point to lapses in administrative processes and quality control. Some families reported hiring outside aides because they felt the facility could not meet basic care needs. Cost is mentioned as a concern by some reviewers who feel the price does not match the level of care provided.
Patterns and takeaways for prospective families: The recurring pattern is variability—some residents receive excellent, attentive care in clean, activity-rich environments, while others experience neglect, unsafe practices, and poor hygiene. Positive reviews often highlight specific staff members or particular wings (for example a dementia wing) as delivering consistently good care, suggesting pockets of excellence. Negative reviews frequently describe systemic failures (infection control, staffing, responsiveness) that resulted in serious adverse outcomes. Prospective residents and families should plan detailed tours, ask for unit-specific staffing ratios, inquire about infection-control practices and recent incidents, request references from current families in the specific unit of interest, and verify availability of clinical oversight (PT/OT, social work, and physician coverage). Given the mixed record, placement decisions should be made with careful, unit-level scrutiny rather than relying solely on general impressions of the facility.
