New London Sub-Acute: Behavioral Health Training Failures - CT
That was the situation at New London Sub-Acute and Nursing on Clark Lane when federal inspectors arrived in late March. The facility, which houses between 102 and 108 residents, had roughly 50 of them with behavioral health needs at any given time. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, psychosis, anxiety, depression, personality disorders — the facility's own annual assessment listed all of them as conditions it was equipped to treat. The assessment also stated that nursing assistants received education on combative care and behavioral disturbances.
What the records showed was something else.
Inspectors reviewed in-service calendars stretching from March 2024 through March 2025. A full year. Across that entire span, not a single behavioral health training session appeared on the calendar. No scheduled sessions. No documentation that any had taken place.
The one exception surfaced the day before inspectors completed their review. On March 26, 2025, a psychiatry services provider ran a personality disorders in-service. Nineteen staff members signed in. The facility employs 164 people. That is an 11.5 percent compliance rate, for a single session held one day before the inspection closed.
The administrator acknowledged during his interview on March 27 that staff should be receiving behavioral health education, and that he understood it was being delivered by the psychiatry services group on a regular basis. He was not asked to explain the gap between that understanding and what the records showed, because the records showed almost nothing.
The staff development nurse, interviewed the same afternoon, told inspectors her role was to schedule the education and post it to the in-service calendar. She said the psychiatry group provided training regularly. When inspectors asked her to produce past sign-in sheets documenting those sessions, she could not.
There were none.
Inspectors also asked for the facility's policy on behavioral health. It was not provided.
The deficiency was cited at a level of potential for minimal harm, meaning inspectors did not document a specific resident who was injured as a result. That designation reflects what could be traced directly to the training gap, not the gap itself. Nearly half the residents in the building live with psychiatric conditions that can produce unpredictable, sometimes dangerous behavior. Nursing assistants are typically the staff members closest to those residents for the most hours in a day. Whether they know how to recognize a psychiatric crisis, de-escalate a combative resident, or respond appropriately to someone in a dissociative episode depends on whether anyone has taught them.
For at least the past year, the documentation suggests that almost no one had.
The facility's own assessment committed it to that training. The administrator believed it was happening. The nurse responsible for scheduling it said it was happening. The calendar was blank, and the filing cabinet was empty.
Fifty residents were depending on staff who, by the facility's own records, had received no documented preparation for the work.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for New London Sub-acute and Nursing from 2025-03-27 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 3, 2026 · Our methodology
NEW LONDON SUB-ACUTE AND NURSING in WATERFORD, CT was cited for violations during a health inspection on March 27, 2025.
That was the situation at New London Sub-Acute and Nursing on Clark Lane when federal inspectors arrived in late March.
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.