J G Alexander Nursing Center: Food Safety Failures - MS
They were not gone.
During a January 30, 2025 inspection, federal surveyors found that the nursing home's kitchen refrigerator and freezer contained food items that were not labeled, not dated, and not discarded by their expiration dates. It was not the first time inspectors had found this. It was the second time. And the story of how the facility got from the first citation to the second one is a story about a corrective plan that worked, then was abandoned, then was forgotten about entirely.
The nurse, identified in inspection records as RN #3, had been overseeing the facility's Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement program, known as QAPI. She told inspectors she was still technically in that role even though the facility had hired someone else to take it over. The new hire had not yet assumed the responsibilities. A meeting had been scheduled to address the transition. In the meantime, RN #3 was still the person in charge of making sure problems got caught and fixed.
She told inspectors she was unaware food storage issues were still happening in the kitchen.
The facility's kitchen history adds context to how oversight collapsed. At the time of the previous inspection, the kitchen had been operated in conjunction with the hospital. At some point after that survey, J G Alexander transitioned to running its own independent kitchen. That transition brought turnover. Then more turnover. By January 2025, the facility was on its third kitchen director.
RN #3 told inspectors that after the prior citation, food storage concerns were brought to QAPI meetings every month for four consecutive months. Audits were completed and submitted to the Director of Nursing. That process continued until a certain point, and then it stopped. No further kitchen audits had been conducted. Kitchen issues had stopped coming up in meetings. The facility had concluded, without evidence, that the problem had been resolved because the kitchen itself was new.
She confirmed that the facility had implemented its initial plan of correction. She also confirmed the facility had failed to sustain it.
The administrator and the Director of Nursing, interviewed separately at 2:30 in the afternoon on the day of the inspection, told surveyors the plan of correction from the previous deficiency had been completed. The administrator acknowledged the kitchen had gone through multiple staff turnovers since it began operating independently. He said he had spoken with the new kitchen manager, who was currently in training, and that they planned to continue addressing the concerns.
What the inspection record captures, in those two interviews, is a facility that believed finishing a corrective plan was the same thing as solving a problem. The audits ran for four months. The meetings discussed the kitchen for four months. Then the facility decided it was done, and stopped checking. Nobody noticed when the new kitchen staff, cycling through one director after another, let the old habits return.
Food that isn't labeled or dated in a nursing home kitchen isn't a paperwork problem. Residents in nursing facilities are often elderly, medically fragile, or immunocompromised. Expired food served to that population carries real risk. The labeling and dating requirements exist precisely because kitchens get busy, staff turns over, and without a system of documentation, nobody can tell how long something has been sitting in a refrigerator or freezer.
J G Alexander had a system. It built the system in response to a federal citation. It ran the system for four months. Then it dismantled the system without replacing it, and three kitchen directors later, inspectors opened the refrigerator and found the same thing they had found before.
RN #3 told inspectors she would bring the kitchen concerns back to the QAPI committee to develop new action plans and resume audits.
The facility's quality assurance program, designed to catch exactly this kind of backslide, had not caught it. The person running that program learned about the problem from the federal inspectors who came to evaluate her facility, not from any internal audit or monitoring process. The transition to a new QAPI coordinator, still incomplete at the time of the inspection, had left oversight in a state that RN #3 herself described as unresolved.
The kitchen now has a manager who was, as of January 30, still in training.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for J G Alexander Nursing Center from 2025-01-30 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 7, 2026 · Our methodology
J G ALEXANDER NURSING CENTER in UNION, MS was cited for violations during a health inspection on January 30, 2025.
It was not the first time inspectors had found this.
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.