Columbus Health and Rehab: Food Safety Failures - WI
The dietary manager standing beside the inspector looked at both bags and said they should be thrown away.
The date was February 24, 2025. Columbus Health and Rehab, a 38-bed facility on Western Avenue, was in the middle of a federal inspection that would turn up food safety problems in the kitchen, in a medication room refrigerator, and in the basic practices staff used to handle ingredients every day.
The parsley had been received on January 21. The lettuce arrived February 11. Neither had been discarded before an inspector found them.
Later that same morning, the inspector walked through the kitchen with the dietary manager and found three large containers, one each of flour, brown sugar, and white sugar, each with a scoop sitting directly inside. The dietary manager said the scoops should not be stored that way because it could cause cross-contamination. The scoops were sitting in the food.
The problems extended past the kitchen.
On February 25, the inspector found four Sysco Imperial Strawberry Shakes in the medication room refrigerator. The shakes are nutritional supplements, the kind given to residents who need additional calories or protein. None of the four had a use-by date on them. A registered nurse was asked when the shakes would expire or when they should be disposed of. The nurse said there was no way to tell because the shakes had no labels.
The next morning, the inspector sat down with the nursing home administrator and the director of nursing. The question was straightforward: if a supplemental shake has no label, can staff accurately determine when it needs to be used or thrown out? Both the administrator and the director of nursing said no. The inspector asked whether there should be a use-by date on supplemental shakes. Both said yes.
The inspection report rated the food safety deficiency as causing minimal harm or potential for actual harm, and noted it had the ability to affect all 38 residents.
What the report captures, across three separate findings on three separate days, is a pattern that the facility's own managers recognized as wrong the moment an inspector pointed to it. The dietary manager knew the scoops shouldn't be in the containers. The administrator and director of nursing knew unlabeled shakes couldn't be safely tracked. The parsley and lettuce, by the dietary manager's own account, should have already been gone.
Nobody had caught any of it before the inspector arrived.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Columbus Health and Rehab from 2025-03-12 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.
Corrections: We strive for accuracy in everything we publish. If you believe any fact in this article is incorrect, please contact us with details, and we will review and correct it promptly.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: November 8, 2026 · Our methodology
Columbus Health and Rehab in Columbus, WI was cited for violations during a health inspection on March 12, 2025.
The dietary manager standing beside the inspector looked at both bags and said they should be thrown away.
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.