Inland Valley Care and Rehab: Food Temperature Failures - CA
Inspectors cited the facility under a standard that requires nursing homes to serve food and drink that is palatable, attractive, and at a safe and appetizing temperature. They found Inland Valley falling short on all of it. The violation was classified at Scope/Severity Level E, meaning inspectors documented a pattern of failures, with no actual harm recorded but the potential for more than minimal harm to residents.
That last phrase carries weight in a nursing home setting. Residents who depend entirely on staff to bring them meals have no alternative when what arrives is cold, unappetizing, or both. They cannot walk to the kitchen and reheat it. They cannot order something else. What comes through the door is what they get.
The food temperature citation was one of 27 deficiencies inspectors cited during this single visit. Twenty-seven. In one inspection, at one facility, on one day.
The breadth of that number is worth sitting with. Federal inspections examine dozens of care categories, from how a facility handles medications to how it prevents infections to whether residents are treated with dignity. To accumulate 27 deficiencies across that landscape is not a matter of one bad afternoon in the kitchen. It reflects conditions inspectors found throughout the building, across multiple departments, touching multiple aspects of daily life for the people who live there.
The dietary citation alone, stripped of the larger context, might read as minor. Temperature logs, a thermostat on a steam table, a cart that sat too long in a hallway. But the classification as a pattern means this wasn't a one-time finding an inspector caught on an unlucky day. It was happening repeatedly, to multiple residents, often enough that inspectors characterized it as systemic rather than incidental.
For older adults in a care facility, nutrition is not a comfort issue. It is a medical one. Residents in skilled nursing facilities are frequently there because their bodies have become less able to manage illness, recover from surgery, or maintain weight without help. A meal that arrives cold enough to be unappetizing, or unappealing enough that a resident pushes it away, is a meal that doesn't get eaten. Across days and weeks, that compounds.
Inland Valley reported the food temperature deficiency corrected by August 25, three days after inspectors documented it. The speed of that reported correction is notable. Whether a kitchen's practices change durably in 72 hours, or whether the paperwork of correction outruns the reality of it, is something only follow-up inspections can answer.
The facility has not responded publicly to the inspection findings.
What the August 22 inspection captured was a snapshot of a facility where, on that day, inspectors found enough wrong to fill 27 separate deficiency citations. Some of those citations may involve more acute failures than a pattern of lukewarm meals. The inspection record does not rank them by severity in a way that makes a clean hierarchy obvious. What it does is accumulate. Citation after citation, category after category, until the picture that emerges is of a place where the standard of care inspectors are looking for was not consistently being met.
For the residents of Inland Valley, the August inspection is now a matter of record. The meals they were served in the days and weeks before inspectors arrived, the food that came to their rooms or their dining tables at temperatures that weren't right, in presentations that weren't appetizing, those meals were already eaten or pushed aside long before anyone wrote a citation. The correction date on the paperwork is August 25. The pattern that produced the violation was already in place.
Twenty-seven deficiencies. A pattern of food served cold. And residents who had no choice but to eat it, or not.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Inland Valley Care and Rehabilitation Center from 2025-08-22 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: October 15, 2026 · Our methodology
INLAND VALLEY CARE AND REHABILITATION CENTER in POMONA, CA was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 22, 2025.
They found Inland Valley falling short on all of it.
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.