Ridgewood Living & Rehab: Respiratory Care Failure - NC
The respiratory care finding falls under a category that covers quality of life and care, the broad bucket of obligations a nursing facility carries toward residents who depend entirely on staff for medical support they cannot provide themselves. Respiratory care failures carry particular weight in a long-term care setting. Residents who need breathing assistance, oxygen management, or airway support cannot wait for a problem to be noticed on the next shift. A lapse, even one that produces no documented injury, creates a window in which something worse can happen.
That is precisely what inspectors flagged here. The deficiency was classified at scope and severity level D, meaning inspectors characterized it as an isolated incident that produced no actual harm but carried potential for more than minimal harm. That language is the regulatory floor for a citable deficiency. It means inspectors looked at what they found and concluded that residents were not fully protected.
The facility was cited on September 5. By September 23, Ridgewood reported the problem corrected.
Eighteen days is not an unusually long correction window, and the regulatory process is designed to give facilities time to address problems without shutting their doors. But the sequence, a complaint inspection that finds a respiratory care failure, followed by a correction date set nearly three weeks later, leaves open the question of what happened to residents in the space between.
The inspection was triggered by a complaint, not a routine survey cycle. That distinction matters. Routine inspections are scheduled and anticipated. Complaint inspections happen because someone, a resident, a family member, a staff member, or a visitor, contacted regulators and said something was wrong. The inspection that followed confirmed at least part of what prompted the call.
Ridgewood Living & Rehabilitation Center is a licensed nursing facility in Washington, a small city on the Pamlico River in Beaufort County, one of the more rural stretches of eastern North Carolina. For residents who need skilled nursing care in that part of the state, options are limited. When a facility in a rural area accumulates deficiencies, the practical alternatives for families are often far away and no better known.
The respiratory care violation was not the only problem inspectors documented on September 5. Eleven deficiencies in total came out of that single inspection. The full list of those findings was not detailed in the summary data available for this report, but eleven citations in a complaint inspection is a significant number. Complaint inspections are typically narrower in scope than comprehensive annual surveys, focused on the specific concern that generated the complaint. Finding eleven problems during that kind of targeted review suggests inspectors encountered issues beyond whatever originally brought them to the door.
The facility has reported corrections for the deficiencies cited. Regulatory correction status is self-reported by the provider, meaning Ridgewood told inspectors it had fixed the problem by September 23. Whether that correction holds, and whether it addressed the underlying conditions that allowed a respiratory care failure to occur in the first place, will not be tested until inspectors return.
That is how the system works. A deficiency is cited. A correction date is set. The provider reports compliance. The next inspection will either confirm that the problems were resolved or find that they were not.
For the residents at Ridgewood, that cycle is not abstract. Respiratory care in a nursing home covers a range of needs, from residents on supplemental oxygen to those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tracheostomies, or ventilator dependence. A resident who needs a nebulizer treatment at a specific time, or whose oxygen concentrator settings require monitoring, or whose secretions need to be managed to prevent aspiration, relies on staff to deliver that care correctly and consistently. When inspectors find that a facility has fallen short of providing safe respiratory care, there is a resident, or more than one, at the center of that finding.
The inspection report does not name them. It does not describe what they needed or what they did not receive. The regulatory summary offers a category, a severity level, and a correction date. What it does not offer is an account of what those residents experienced, or whether anyone who loved them knew to make a call to regulators at all.
Ridgewood Living & Rehabilitation Center had eleven deficiencies documented on September 5, 2025. One of them involved the air that some of its residents needed to breathe safely.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Ridgewood Living & Rehabilitation Center from 2025-09-05 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.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: September 25, 2026 · Our methodology
Ridgewood Living & Rehabilitation Center in Washington, NC was cited for violations during a health inspection on September 5, 2025.
Respiratory care failures carry particular weight in a long-term care setting.
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.