The Ponce Therapy Care Center

Do NOT place your loved ones here! My father was here from March 3 - April 15 until we could have him transferred to another facility. These were some of our experiences: The bedside oxygen machine was turned off completely when I arrived one evening. (He needs a constant supply at level 2) I'm not sure how long he had been sitting in bed that evening without the machine assisting. The oxygen tank on his wheelchair was completely empty when I arrived to find him asleep sitting in the hallway. I'm not sure how long he had been sitting there, but I had to ask a nurse to change the O2 tank on his chair. NUMEROUS times I arrived to find that my father was just sitting in a soiled pull-up and hadn't been out of bed that day. I had a 'Family does laundry' tag on his cabinet - yet the facility sent two of his shorts/tops to laundry instead of bagging them and we never saw them again. They had me dig through a giant TRASH CAN of misplaced resident clothing articles and I could not find my father's items. The items were not replaced or compensated for. The shared rooms are TINY, with little room to maneuver a wheelchair in and out. The bathroom in those rooms are extremely hard to access for residents in wheelchairs as well, and not cleaned regularly. There's no ACCESSIBLE outdoor space for residents to easily go in and out. The back door to each patio stays locked with an alarm. You have to ask someone to buzz out the door, and then there's no way for a resident to get back in without using a cell phone to call the front desk to ask someone to come and open the door. We walked the long way around the building to re-enter the front door instead, but it was across several severely damaged parking lots and at a distance that someone in a wheelchair would not be able to maneuver on their own. The only option for residents to go in/out on their own is to sit in front of the building, where there is only ONE bench for a visitor to sit with them. The dining room and hallways lack windows! The place feels like a depressing dungeon. Most residents cannot get outside on their own and I do hope they can at least see out of a room window and don't have a roommate that wanted to keep the blinds closed 24/7 as my father's roommate did. It smells really bad. Maybe it's due to lack of proper ventilation in the place, or maybe it's because they are letting residents sit in the hallways in soiled undergarments. Either way, the facility NEEDS a deep cleaning. Several times I arrived to find that my father's water cup was completely empty. When there was water in there, it was always from that morning and contained no ice. No one wants to drink tepid tap water. Asking for a cup of ice from the nurse's station resulted in one nurse huffing and acting like it was an inconvenience. Hygiene care: In almost 6 weeks, my father was only taken in for a full shower twice. He was only shaved once, he could not access a sink on his own, and was not provided hand sanitization before meals. PRO: The activities director Annette was extremely nice. I did like her a lot, as she seemed to really care about residents.