Overall sentiment in the review summaries for Colonial Living and Rehabilitation of Bay City is sharply mixed, ranging from strong praise for individual staff and coordination to very serious allegations of neglect, unethical conduct, and potential medical harm. Several reviewers explicitly praise the facility: they describe caring and professional staff, note effective coordination with doctors, hospitals, and government entities, and call out individual employees (for example, Audrey Cavity Lemon) as being especially professional and compassionate. Other reviewers say the facility delivered good care and even call it a great facility. These positive comments focus primarily on staff competence, interpersonal care, and external coordination with healthcare providers.
Counterbalancing those positive reports are multiple, severe negative allegations. Several reviewers claim the facility engaged in unethical or illegal behavior, including preventing family members from managing care or visiting patients, pressuring or demanding additional payments, and allegedly forcing a Johnson & Johnson vaccination on a resident. Some reviewers explicitly link the vaccination to a serious adverse outcome—an alleged stroke and subsequent death—though these are described as reports or allegations from reviewers rather than independently verified facts. Additional extreme accusations include bullying, threats, and statements that the facility or staff were "accomplices" to crimes and should be sued. These claims, if accurate, represent critical safety, legal, and ethical concerns and would warrant independent investigation.
Beyond those headline allegations, several practical and recurring operational problems appear across reviews. Multiple comments point to poor rooms and overall facility conditions, while others describe poor service and families being ignored. Communication problems are frequently cited: reviewers report rude or unhelpful staff, instances of staff hanging up on callers, and an overall lack of clear, timely communication about patient status. In at least one summary, family members felt compelled to visit daily to ensure their loved one received adequate care—an indicator of either insufficient staffing, inconsistent care practices, or a lack of trust between families and facility management.
There are also specific clinical concerns raised in the negative summaries. Allegations of neglect and malpractice include claims that residents received high-dose medications without proper monitoring and that such medication practices may have contributed to adverse outcomes, including death. These are serious clinical accusations that go beyond poor customer service and, if true, would implicate care protocols, medication administration practices, and oversight from clinical leadership.
Taken together, the reviews present a starkly polarized picture. On one hand, there is evidence that some staff provide high-quality, coordinated care and that certain residents/families had good experiences. On the other hand, numerous reviews relay very serious accusations about ethical misconduct, forced medical interventions, poor facility conditions, neglectful clinical practices, and abusive staff behavior. The coexistence of strong praise and severe allegations suggests inconsistent performance across shifts, units, or time periods, or alternatively, that experiences vary greatly by individual staff members or by resident case complexity.
Recommendations based on these patterns: treat the serious allegations as reports requiring verification rather than confirmed facts. Families or advocates should request full documentation (care plans, medication administration records, vaccination consent forms), escalate concerns to facility leadership in writing, contact the local long-term care ombudsman, and consult state licensing and inspection reports for compliance history. If there are allegations of forced medical treatment, harm, or criminal activity, contacting relevant public health authorities or legal counsel for further investigation would be appropriate. For those considering the facility, it would be prudent to visit in person, ask for recent inspection results, speak to multiple families if possible, and get clear written answers about visitation policies, consent procedures, medication monitoring, and staffing levels to reconcile the highly divergent accounts in the reviews.
