Faith Healthcare Center: Immediate Jeopardy Finding - SC
The citation, issued September 5, 2025, followed a complaint inspection. The deficiency was classified under F0689, which covers accidents and supervision. Inspectors determined that a small number of residents were affected.
What the inspection record shows, in the facility's own corrective language, is that a specific side door had not been properly locked and alarmed. In a building that houses people who may wander, a door that opens without restriction is not a minor administrative lapse. It is the difference between a resident staying inside and a resident walking out into traffic, into heat, into whatever is on the other side.
The facility's plan of correction, submitted before the inspection closed, describes what happened next in the kind of bureaucratic shorthand that can obscure the weight of what it is describing. All keys capable of disabling the door locks or alarms were collected and placed with the administrator on September 1, 2025. The identified side door, the plan states, will remain locked and alarmed at all times going forward.
That sentence, "will remain locked and alarmed at all times," is the facility acknowledging that it had not been.
Staff were reeducated on September 1st about which doors they are permitted to use when entering and leaving the building. Any employee who had not received that training by September 1st was to receive it before their next scheduled shift. The administrator or a designee was assigned to check all exit doors daily for three months to confirm they are secure and functioning. The maintenance director was assigned to validate exit doors weekly.
The facility also committed to running elopement drills three times a month for three months, one drill per shift, covering first, second, and third shift staff across September, October, and November of 2025.
The schedule is precise: September 3rd for first shift, September 9th for second shift, September 16th for third shift. Then October 7th, 14th, and 21st. Then November 4th, 11th, and 18th. Nine drills in total, one for every shift configuration, over a ninety-day window.
The medical director was notified of the contents of the corrective plan on September 2nd and was notified of the immediate jeopardy finding itself on September 4th. An ad hoc quality assurance meeting was held September 2nd.
The sequence of those dates matters. The facility began corrective action on September 1st. The inspector's finding of immediate jeopardy was communicated to the medical director on September 4th. The inspection itself closed September 5th. The facility was moving to correct the problem before the inspection formally concluded, which is how immediate jeopardy citations sometimes work in practice. A facility can begin remediation and have the immediate jeopardy designation lifted if inspectors determine the danger has been addressed. The inspection report here covers five pages, and this narrative represents the final page.
What the report does not describe, because complaint inspection narratives often do not, is what triggered the complaint in the first place. It does not say whether a resident was found outside. It does not say whether someone walked through the unsecured door and was brought back, or whether the problem was discovered before anyone left. The inspection record as released addresses only the corrective plan and the immediate jeopardy finding, not the underlying incident that prompted a complaint to be filed.
That absence is itself a feature of how these records reach the public. The formal deficiency citation and plan of correction become the documented record. The event that preceded them, the thing someone called in to report, lives in intake logs and investigation notes that are not always reflected in the final published form.
What is reflected is the severity level. Immediate jeopardy is not assigned routinely. It requires inspectors to determine that a facility's failure has caused, or is likely to cause, serious injury, harm, impairment, or death. The threshold is not low. Inspectors who find conditions that are problematic but not acutely dangerous will cite deficiencies at lower harm levels. When they write immediate jeopardy, they are saying that residents were, at the time of the finding, at serious risk.
Elopement, in nursing home terminology, refers to a resident leaving a facility without staff knowledge or authorization. The population at risk is primarily residents with dementia or cognitive impairment who may not understand where they are, may not recognize danger, and may not be able to find their way back. When a door that should be locked is not locked, and when a door that should alarm when opened does not alarm, the system designed to catch a wandering resident before they reach the outside fails entirely.
The consequences of elopement are not theoretical. Residents have died in the hours after leaving nursing facilities, found in parking lots, in drainage ditches, on roads. In cold weather, hypothermia. In summer heat in South Carolina, heat stroke. The corrective plan submitted by Faith Healthcare Center does not describe any resident outcome, and nothing in the available record confirms whether anyone left the building. But immediate jeopardy was found, and the facility's own response treats the door failure as something that required urgent, sustained correction across three months and nine drills.
The administrator took personal custody of the keys that could disable the locks. That detail, small as it reads in the corrective plan, reflects how the facility chose to eliminate the risk at its source. Not a policy memo. Not a reminder posted near the door. The physical means of disabling the security system was removed from general access and placed with one person.
Faith Healthcare Center is a long-term care facility in Florence, South Carolina. The inspection was a complaint survey, meaning it was not a routine annual inspection but one triggered by a specific report. The facility identification number is 425009.
The plan of correction was accepted as part of the inspection closure process. Whether the drills happened on the dates listed, whether the daily door checks were completed, whether the side door remained secured, those questions belong to the follow-up process, to state surveyors who may return, to the ongoing oversight cycle that is supposed to catch the gap between what a plan of correction promises and what a facility actually does.
What the record shows, as of September 5, 2025, is a nursing home where a door that should have been locked was not locked, where inspectors found the situation serious enough to call it an immediate threat to resident safety, and where the response involved collecting keys, retraining staff, and scheduling nine months of drills to practice what to do when a resident walks out.
The door is locked now. The alarm is on. The administrator has the keys.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Faith Healthcare Center from 2025-09-05 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: August 4, 2026 · Our methodology
Faith Healthcare Center in Florence, SC was cited for immediate jeopardy violations during a health inspection on September 5, 2025.
The citation, issued September 5, 2025, followed a complaint inspection.
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.