Loyalhanna Care Center: Resident Diet Rights Denied - PA
The inspection, conducted March 20, 2025, documented what happened when Resident 8 asked for a diet change. The Director of Nursing knew about it. The Medical Director wouldn't write the order. And when the Director of Nursing brought it up the chain, the Nursing Home Administrator told her the new ownership did not do waivers.
That was the answer. New ownership policy.
The Director of Nursing, interviewed by inspectors at 12:39 p.m. that day, said she was aware of the resident's request and that the Medical Director had declined to write the order. She said she was going to check with the administrator and that she believed the resident should be able to get the diet she wanted.
Less than an hour later, at 1:26 p.m., she had her answer. The administrator had told her the new ownership didn't do waivers. She still said she believed the resident should have what she wanted, and that she would be speaking with the Medical Director.
She had already spoken to the Medical Director. He had already said no.
What the inspection report does not say is whether Resident 8 ever got the food she asked for. It does not say how long she had been asking. It does not say what she was being given instead, or why a modified diet had been ordered in the first place.
What it does say is that the Director of Nursing, caught between a resident's stated wish, a Medical Director who wouldn't act, and an administrator citing new ownership as the reason to do nothing, ended the conversation by saying she would try again. Inspectors cited the facility under Pennsylvania's resident rights code.
The violation was tagged at the lowest level of harm. But the mechanics of what happened deserve attention regardless of where it lands on a severity scale. A resident stated what she wanted to eat. The person responsible for nursing care agreed she should have it. The physician responsible for her medical orders declined to write them. The administrator responsible for the facility told the nursing director that ownership had decided waivers weren't something they did.
Nobody asked Resident 8 anything further, at least not in any way the inspection report records.
Resident rights in a nursing home are not suggestions that staff weigh against administrative preference. They are the legal foundation of what a facility owes the people living in it. The right to make decisions about one's own care, including what to eat, sits near the center of that framework. When a facility's response to a resident's request is to run it up a chain of command that ends with a policy answer from new ownership, something has gone wrong with how the facility understands its obligations.
The Director of Nursing seemed to understand this. She said twice, in two separate interviews, that she believed the resident should be able to have what she wanted. That belief did not translate into action before inspectors arrived and documented the standoff.
Loyalhanna Care Center sits on McFarland Road in Latrobe, a small city in Westmoreland County about 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The facility had recently come under new ownership at the time of the inspection, a transition that, according to the administrator's own statement, had brought with it a policy of not pursuing waivers.
What that policy meant for Resident 8, in practical terms, was that she was still eating whatever she had been eating before she asked for something different.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Loyalhanna Care Center from 2025-03-20 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.
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Last verified: November 2, 2026 · Our methodology
LOYALHANNA CARE CENTER in LATROBE, PA was cited for violations during a health inspection on March 20, 2025.
The inspection, conducted March 20, 2025, documented what happened when Resident 8 asked for a diet change.
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.