Mountain Laurel Healthcare: Dining Room Closed - PA
The reason, confirmed by the facility's own dietary director: not enough nursing staff to open it safely.
Federal inspectors visited on August 11, 2025, and found five residents eating in their rooms at 12:35 in the afternoon. One sat at her bedside table. Another ate off a tray on her bed. None of them had chosen to be there.
The resident identified in the inspection report as Resident 46 told inspectors the dining room had been closed since the previous week. She preferred eating there. She had no idea why it was shut.
Resident 81 said she always ate in the main dining room and hadn't been allowed to for several days. The explanation she received from staff amounted to this: you're not allowed. No reason given.
Resident 95 was told something slightly more specific — that the dining room couldn't be safely opened. That was all.
Resident 83 and Resident 69 both said they had been told, or had figured out, that nursing staff was short. Resident 69 believed the closure had to do with not having enough people. Resident 83 said she had been told directly that there wasn't enough nursing staff available to keep the dining room open.
Two nursing aides confirmed the same thing when inspectors interviewed them two days later, on August 13. Nurse Aide 1 said the first-floor dining rooms had been closed since the previous week because of staffing. Nurse Aide 4 said they had been told the dining room would be closed and believed it was because nursing staff are required to be present during meal service and there weren't enough of them.
The dietary director, interviewed that same afternoon, confirmed the dining room had been closed since Monday, August 11, because the facility could not safely open it given the nursing shortage. Then the dietary director said something that undercut the entire situation in a single sentence: residents should be able to eat where they prefer.
The facility knew that. It closed the dining room anyway.
The inspection was a complaint survey, meaning someone raised a concern that prompted regulators to come. CMS rated the violation at the minimal harm level, which in the agency's framework means residents were not seriously injured. But the framework doesn't account for what it means to spend your days in a place where your preferences are treated as negotiable when staffing gets tight.
For nursing home residents, mealtimes in a shared dining room are often among the few daily anchors of ordinary life — a scheduled hour with other people, a reason to get dressed, a small but real exercise of choice. These five residents had all made that preference known to staff. The facility was aware of it. When the staffing shortage hit, the dining room closed and the residents ate alone, some of them without being told why, some of them waiting for an explanation that apparently never came.
The deficiency was cited under Pennsylvania administrative code governing administrator responsibility. No federal immediate jeopardy tag was attached. The plan of correction, if one was submitted, is not included in the publicly available inspection document.
What the record does show is a dietary director who agreed, on the record, that residents should eat where they prefer, in a facility where they had not been allowed to do exactly that for at least a week before inspectors arrived and started asking questions.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Mountain Laurel Healthcare and Rehabilitation Ctr from 2025-08-14 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Download the official CMS inspection PDF from Medicare.gov
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: September 22, 2026 · Our methodology
MOUNTAIN LAUREL HEALTHCARE AND REHABILITATION CTR in CLEARFIELD, PA was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 14, 2025.
The reason, confirmed by the facility's own dietary director: not enough nursing staff to open it safely.
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.