Barnes-Kasson County Hospital: Drug Regimen Failures - PA
The citation, designated F757, targets the facility's handling of drug regimens — specifically, whether residents are receiving medications that are necessary, whether those medications are monitored properly, and whether anyone is catching problems before they cause harm. It is among the more consequential categories of nursing home violations because medication errors and oversight failures are a leading cause of preventable injury in long-term care settings.
Inspectors also cited the facility under two Pennsylvania state nursing regulations. The first, 28 Pa. Code 211.10, governs resident care policies — the written standards a facility is supposed to follow and enforce when caring for residents. The second, 28 Pa. Code 211.12, governs nursing services directly, covering how nurses are deployed, how they document care, and how they carry out the orders physicians write for residents.
Both state citations ran alongside the federal F757 tag. That combination matters. A federal citation for medication management paired with state citations for care policy failures and nursing service breakdowns suggests inspectors found not just an isolated incident but a pattern — something in how the facility operates its nursing function that allowed a medication problem to exist in the first place.
The inspection report available from this review does not name individual residents or describe specific incidents in detail. What it does record is that the violations were substantiated and documented across nine pages of inspection findings.
Barnes-Kasson County Hospital occupies a particular position in Susquehanna County. It is a rural critical access hospital with a long-term care component, serving a part of northeastern Pennsylvania where residents have few alternatives if they need skilled nursing care close to home. Facilities in that position carry a weight that larger urban nursing homes do not. When something goes wrong with medication management in a place like this, the people affected often have nowhere else to go.
The F757 deficiency category has a specific meaning in federal inspection language. It applies when a facility fails to ensure that each resident's drug regimen is free from unnecessary medications, or fails to monitor residents adequately for the effects of the medications they are receiving. Unnecessary medications, in this context, includes drugs given in excessive doses, drugs given for excessive duration, drugs given without adequate monitoring, and drugs given without a documented clinical reason.
The nursing services citation adds a layer. Under 28 Pa. Code 211.12, nursing staff are responsible for carrying out care in a way that meets each resident's needs, for documenting what they observe, and for communicating changes in condition to physicians. When that system breaks down, medication problems that should be caught and corrected instead persist.
What the inspection record does not answer is how long the conditions existed before inspectors arrived, how many residents were affected, and what the facility did after the citation was issued. Those are the questions that determine whether a citation represents a brief lapse or something more entrenched.
Inspections of this kind are conducted by state surveyors acting on behalf of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Facilities that receive citations are required to submit plans of correction, describing what they will do differently and by when. Whether those plans translate into lasting change is something subsequent inspections are meant to determine.
For the residents at Barnes-Kasson in January 2025, the inspection captured a moment when the systems meant to protect them from medication harm were not working as they should have been. The report does not tell us their names, or what medications were involved, or what they experienced. It records only that inspectors came, looked at what was happening, and found it fell short.
That gap, between what the record shows and what residents actually lived through, is where the real story sits.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Barnes-kasson County Hospital from 2025-01-16 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Additional Resources
Data source: This article is based on inspection data downloaded directly from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) via Medicare.gov. CMS releases inspection reports in bulk; we publish the findings as documented by state surveyors in the official Form CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies.
Plan of correction: The CMS report we receive does not include the facility's plan of correction. Facilities submit plans of correction separately to state survey agencies and those responses may not be reflected in CMS data at the time of publication. The absence of a plan of correction in our data does not mean one was not filed. Readers who want information about corrective steps taken are encouraged to contact the facility directly or their state survey agency.
Corrections may have occurred: Inspection reports reflect conditions observed on the date of the survey. Facilities may have implemented corrections, staffing changes, additional training, or other remediation since the report was issued. We report what CMS provides and encourage readers to seek current information from the facility.
Editorial process: Inspection findings are extracted from CMS source documents and synthesized using AI, reviewed for factual accuracy against the original report by our editorial team.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: August 9, 2026 · Our methodology
BARNES-KASSON COUNTY HOSPITAL in SUSQUEHANNA, PA was cited for violations during a health inspection on January 16, 2025.
Inspectors also cited the facility under two Pennsylvania state nursing regulations.
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.