Tabor Manor Care Center: Background Check Failure - IA
The nurse, identified in the report only as Staff E, was hired on June 9, 2025. A background check request had been submitted three weeks before that, on May 20. The results came back flagged: criminal history required further research, and the findings were to be faxed to the facility. That fax, or whatever response eventually arrived, was never printed, never filed, and apparently never tracked.
By the time inspectors arrived in August, the facility could not produce any confirmation that Staff E had been cleared to work.
The facility's own hiring policy, though undated, states plainly that the background check must be completed, submitted, and cleared before an employee starts on the floor. A separate abuse prevention policy says the same thing in different language: documentation of a criminal record check and abuse registry check must be in hand before hire. Both policies existed. Neither had been followed.
On the afternoon of August 19, the administrator told inspectors the facility was still looking for the email response that would have confirmed approval to work. The next morning, at 10:35, the administrator came back with the same answer. The email had not been found, in printed or electronic form.
The administrator did not dispute what had happened. She confirmed the facility was required to have that approval in hand the moment it learned further research was needed. And then she said something that widened the scope of the problem considerably: this had been an issue before. The facility, she said, was continuing to work on an improved process for submitting and tracking background check documentation.
That phrase, "continued to work on," suggests a problem that predates this nurse, this hire date, this inspection.
The background check in question covered three separate databases. Iowa's Criminal History registry. The Iowa Sex Offender Registry. The Iowa Central Abuse Registry, which tracks confirmed cases of dependent adult and child abuse. All three are required. All three were wrapped up in the same unresolved request. None had been confirmed cleared before Staff E began working with residents.
Tabor Manor had 40 residents at the time of the inspection.
What the incomplete check actually revealed about Staff E, the inspection report does not say. The report is structured around what the facility failed to do, not around what a completed check might have shown. That distinction matters. The deficiency is procedural, and inspectors rated the level of harm as minimal or potential. But the point of a background check is that you don't know what it will find until you finish it. The facility didn't finish it.
The Single Contact License and Background Check system, known in Iowa as SING, is the mechanism the state uses to vet people before they work with vulnerable adults. When the system flags a record for further research, it is not a bureaucratic formality. It is the system telling the employer that something requires a closer look before this person is placed in a position of trust. Tabor Manor received that flag. It did not wait for the answer.
Staff E worked through June, through July, into August. The inspection was completed August 20.
The administrator's acknowledgment that this had been a recurring problem raises questions the inspection report does not answer. How many other employees were hired under similar circumstances? How far back does the pattern go? The report reviewed one employee file. It found a failure in that one file. It does not say whether other files were reviewed and found clean, or whether the review was limited to Staff E.
What the report does establish is that the facility's own written policies were clear, the administrator understood what was required, and the gap between policy and practice had been identified as a problem before this inspection and had not been fixed.
Background check failures at nursing homes are not always discovered through routine inspections. They surface when something goes wrong, when a resident is harmed by someone whose history, if checked, might have raised a flag. The inspection at Tabor Manor was triggered by a complaint, not a scheduled survey. The report does not describe what the complaint alleged or whether it involved Staff E.
Tabor Manor Care Center sits at 209 Main Street in Tabor, a small town in Fremont County in southwestern Iowa. The facility serves 40 residents.
The administrator confirmed the facility was required to have the approval to work documentation upon receiving a notification that further research was required. She confirmed it did not have that documentation. She confirmed the facility had known this was a problem and had been working to improve the process.
Working to improve a process and actually fixing it are different things. The nurse had been on the floor for more than ten weeks.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Tabor Manor Care Center from 2025-08-20 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 3, 2026 · Our methodology
Tabor Manor Care Center in Tabor, IA was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 20, 2025.
The nurse, identified in the report only as Staff E, was hired on June 9, 2025.
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.