Azria Health Park Place: Kitchen Filth, Illness Outbreak - IA
Federal inspectors arrived on September 3, 2025, and found a kitchen that hadn't been formally cleaned, by its own records, since late April.
The violation was classified as immediate jeopardy, meaning inspectors determined the conditions posed a serious risk of harm or death to residents. The finding affected many residents.
Inside the kitchen, inspectors found two sticky rodent traps sitting on a plastic crate. An unlabeled bag of what appeared to be frozen eggs sat in an Arctic Air freezer, open and unsealed. When surveyors asked for kitchen cleaning logs, they were told the facility would look for them. The request was made twice on September 3 and again the morning of September 4 before anything was produced. What the facility eventually sent showed the most recent general cleaning log was dated May 31, 2025. The dietary aide cleaning log had last been completed on April 29, 2025, more than four months before inspectors walked through the door.
Staff B, a licensed practical nurse, told inspectors on the afternoon of September 3 that residents had been sick for one to two weeks, with the illness concentrated in the stretch leading up to Labor Day weekend. The facility ran out of briefs that weekend.
Staff A, a certified nursing assistant, was more direct. She told inspectors she could not eat the food at the facility. Every time she did, she had diarrhea all day. Over the Labor Day weekend and into Monday, August 30 through September 1, she said several residents had diarrhea and vomiting.
Residents described the same experience in their own words. Resident 1 told inspectors on September 4 that she had diarrhea all the time and that it hadn't started until she came to the facility. Resident 6 reported projectile vomiting that had lasted three weeks. Resident 14 told inspectors nearly a week later, on September 8, that she couldn't eat the tomato soup at the facility because it gave her diarrhea. She ate tomato soup at home without any problem.
The acting administrator, who also served as the regional director of operations, told inspectors she had not been to the kitchen in a while. She had taken on the administrator role in April 2025 and said the facility had experienced significant staff turnover. The dietary manager had been on the job for two weeks at the time of the inspection.
She described a Kitchen Cleaning Party held on July 17, where staff came in and spent four and a half hours cleaning. She acknowledged at the time of the inspection that another cleaning event was probably needed to finish the job. No logs from that cleaning event appear to have been produced.
After inspectors flagged the immediate jeopardy finding on the evening of September 3, the administrator said she stayed at the facility until 10:45 that night, left, and returned at 3:30 in the morning to keep cleaning. The dietary manager reported he had been at the facility until 9:30 PM on September 3, and that the facility had called in ServiceMaster to clean the floors. Ceiling tiles were replaced. Freezers and shelves were pulled out and sanitized. Everything in the dry storage area was thrown out. Dishes were rewashed.
None of that work was documented before inspectors asked for it.
The administrator said she would look for the cleaning logs and get them to the surveyor. By 11:25 AM on September 4, when a surveyor checked in again, she said they were still working on it. The logs that were eventually provided, showing April and May as the last completed entries, were sent by email later that afternoon.
The facility is located at 2401 East Eighth Street in Des Moines.
Resident 1 didn't have diarrhea before she came to Azria Health Park Place. She had it all the time now. That was what she told an inspector, on a Tuesday morning in early September, while the staff were still pulling freezers away from the walls and throwing out whatever was left in dry storage.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Azria Health Park Place from 2025-09-11 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 21, 2026 · Our methodology
Azria Health Park Place in Des Moines, IA was cited for violations during a health inspection on September 11, 2025.
Federal inspectors arrived on September 3, 2025, and found a kitchen that hadn't been formally cleaned, by its own records, since late April.
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.