Cedarwood Rehab: Dining Room Dropped to 60°F - PA
It was 11:40 in the morning. A federal inspector recorded the temperature and flagged it. Two days later, the inspector came back.
The residents were eating this time. The temperature ranged from 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Sixty degrees is cold enough to see your breath in some conditions. It is the temperature of a refrigerator set slightly warmer than usual. For elderly residents, many of whom have diminished circulation and limited mobility, sitting through a meal in that kind of cold is not a minor inconvenience. It is the kind of environment that can make a person miserable in ways they may not have the capacity or the inclination to report.
The inspection, completed January 10, 2025, cited Cedarwood Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center at 951 Washington Avenue in Tyrone for failing to provide comfortable temperatures in the fourth-floor dining room. The violation was tagged under the federal standard requiring nursing homes to keep their spaces safe, clean, and comfortable for residents.
The maintenance director was present during the first visit, at 11:40 a.m. on January 7. He told the inspector that the dining room doors had been closed and that heat was not circulating in from the hallways. His solution: leave the doors open so warm air could drift in from the corridor. That was it. That was the plan.
By 2:20 that same afternoon, after the doors had apparently been opened, the temperature in the dining room had climbed to 73.4 degrees. The problem, in other words, was fixable within hours. It had not been fixed before residents arrived for lunch.
The maintenance director spoke with inspectors again the following day, January 8, at 12:22 p.m. He confirmed again that temperatures in the fourth-floor dining room were outside acceptable parameters.
The underlying cause turned out to be mechanical. The owner of the HVAC company that came to the facility told inspectors on January 9 that dampers in the system had been left slightly open to the outside. Cold January air had been feeding directly into the dining room. Once the dampers were closed, temperatures returned to a normal range.
That fix happened on January 9. The inspector had first documented the problem on January 7. Residents had eaten in that room, in those temperatures, in the time between.
The deficiency was rated at the lower end of the harm scale, classified as minimal harm or potential for actual harm, affecting a few residents. That classification reflects the regulatory framework's judgment about severity. It does not reflect what it feels like to be an 80-year-old with poor circulation sitting through a January lunch in a 60-degree room, waiting for food that may or may not arrive warm.
Cedarwood is a rehabilitation and long-term care facility. Its residents are, by definition, people who are sick, recovering, or both. Many are there precisely because they cannot manage on their own. The fourth floor dining room is not a space they chose. It is the space the facility provides, and in early January 2025, the facility provided it at temperatures that dropped, on at least one recorded occasion, to 60 degrees.
The maintenance director knew the temperature was wrong. He knew it on January 7. He knew it again on January 8. His proposed fix, opening the dining room doors to let hallway heat drift in, addressed the symptom without addressing the cause. The dampers open to the outside air kept pumping cold into the room until an HVAC contractor came and closed them.
The citation was issued under Pennsylvania Code provisions governing administrator responsibility and facility management, in addition to the federal comfort and safety standard.
Five residents. Two days. A dining room that the facility's own maintenance director acknowledged was not holding acceptable temperatures. The heat from the hallway came in through open doors when the doors were open, and the cold came in through open dampers whenever the HVAC system ran.
On January 9, at 12:16 in the afternoon, inspectors watched five people eat lunch in a room where the thermometer read somewhere between 60 and 70 degrees. The HVAC contractor arrived later that day. The dampers were closed. The temperatures came up.
The residents who ate in the cold that week were not identified in the inspection report by name. They are described only as five people, waiting, then eating, in a room that should have been warm.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Cedarwood Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center from 2025-01-10 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Additional Resources
Data source: Official federal inspection data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Editorial process: AI-synthesized regulatory data, reviewed for accuracy by our editorial team.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: July 5, 2026 · Our methodology
CEDARWOOD REHABILITATION & HEALTHCARE CENTER in TYRONE, PA was cited for violations during a health inspection on January 10, 2025.
A federal inspector recorded the temperature and flagged it.
Health inspections identify deficiencies that facilities must correct. Violations range from minor documentation issues to serious safety concerns. Review the full report below for specific details and facility response.