Oskaloosa Care Center: Ethics Training Gaps Found - IA
Not one.
The facility, which serves 76 residents, couldn't produce documentation that a licensed practical nurse hired in January 2025 had completed the training. It couldn't show the same for three certified nursing assistants hired in April, July, and August of this year. And it had no records showing two additional staff members, both employed long enough to require annual training, had ever completed it either.
The inspection, conducted September 17, 2025, was triggered by a complaint. What inspectors found was a training program that existed on paper in only the vaguest sense.
An undated, untitled facility document described a training program covering all departments, new hires and existing staff alike. But the facility's own in-service attendance calendar, the actual record of what training happened and when, did not list compliance and ethics as a topic at all. The calendar simply didn't include it. The training wasn't behind schedule or partially completed. It wasn't tracked at all.
The director of nursing, interviewed by inspectors at 12:41 p.m. that day, said she did not see any additional education in the staff files. She told inspectors the facility would work to build its training program.
Build it. Not fix it, not update it. Build it.
That phrasing matters. It suggests the program, at least in any functional form, didn't yet exist for these employees. Staff B, the LPN with a hire date of January 8, had been on the job for more than eight months by the time inspectors arrived. Staff Q, a CNA hired August 28, had been working for under three weeks. Between them were Staff O, hired April 16, and Staff P, hired July 16. All four new hires lacked any documentation of compliance and ethics training. Staff M and Staff N, whose hire dates were not specified in the inspection report, were identified as non-new hires, meaning the gap wasn't just about onboarding. The annual requirement had also gone unmet.
Compliance and ethics training in nursing homes isn't an abstraction. It covers how staff are expected to handle situations where doing the right thing and doing the convenient thing diverge, where a resident's dignity is at stake, where a decision about reporting or not reporting gets made in a hallway at the end of a long shift. The staff who didn't receive it weren't working in a vacuum. They were working in a 76-bed facility with real residents in their care.
Inspectors rated the violation as causing minimal harm or potential for actual harm, the lower end of the harm scale. The deficiency was cited under the federal requirement that nursing facilities maintain an effective compliance and ethics program.
What the inspection record shows is a facility that had the language of a training program without its substance. The document describing the program had no date and no title. The calendar that should have shown the training occurring showed nothing of the kind. When the director of nursing was asked about it, she didn't point to records that had been misfiled or a calendar that had been overlooked. She said they would work on building the program.
Six staff members. Zero completions. A calendar with a blank where the training should have been.
The residents at Oskaloosa Care Center had no way of knowing, when those staff members walked into their rooms, that the people caring for them had never been formally trained in the ethical and compliance standards the facility was required to provide.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Oskaloosa Care Center from 2025-09-17 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 18, 2026 · Our methodology
Oskaloosa Care Center in Oskaloosa, IA was cited for violations during a health inspection on September 17, 2025.
The facility, which serves 76 residents, couldn't produce documentation that a licensed practical nurse hired in January 2025 had completed the training.
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.