Highland Hills Post Acute: Resident Assault Failure - PA
A nurse aide was in the room. The aide separated them. Resident R1 walked away, according to a witness statement the aide later signed, "like nothing had happened."
That was May 15, 2025, at 1:45 in the afternoon, in the activity room at Highland Hills Post Acute on Perry Highway. Federal inspectors returned four months later, in September, and found that the facility had failed to protect Resident R3 from a fellow resident it already knew was physically aggressive.
The Director of Nursing confirmed it.
What the inspection record shows is a facility that had the information it needed and did not act on it in time. At 1:45 p.m., Resident R3 was struck. At 1:56 p.m., her progress notes recorded what had happened. At 2:59 p.m., more than an hour after the assault, staff were still documenting the incident. It was not until 3:24 p.m., a full hour and thirty-nine minutes after Resident R3 was punched in the back twice, that a nursing evaluation recommended transferring Resident R1 to a room on the non-secured long-term care unit.
The call to Resident R1's family came somewhere in that window. The provider was notified. Notes were written. And Resident R3, who had done nothing except try to walk past, sat in a chair in the aftermath while staff documented what they had witnessed.
The eINTERACT form completed that afternoon described a change in condition related to "behavioral status evaluation of physical aggression." That language is clinical and careful. What it describes is a resident who grabbed a woman's wrist and punched her in the back hard enough that staff felt compelled to separate them physically, hard enough that he hit her a second time in the process of being separated.
The witness statement from Nurse Aide Employee E13 is the clearest account in the record. The aide entered the dining room and observed Resident R1 holding Resident R3 by the arm and hitting her in the back. When the aide attempted to separate them, Resident R1 hit Resident R3 again. Then he walked away.
No injury was observed, the facility's documentation noted. That phrase appears in inspection reports as a kind of threshold, a marker of how bad things got or didn't get. But no injury observed is not the same as nothing happened. A woman with a walker was grabbed by the wrist and struck twice with a closed fist by a man the facility's own nursing staff would later evaluate for aggressive behaviors. The evaluation came after.
The inspection covered four residents. One of them, Resident R3, was found to have been abused. The citation is F0600, the federal tag for protection from abuse, rated at a level of minimal harm or potential for actual harm. That rating reflects what inspectors could document, not necessarily what the experience was for a woman who was hit twice before anyone could stop it.
Highland Hills Post Acute is a post-acute care facility, meaning it serves residents recovering from illness, surgery, or injury, people who are often already physically compromised, often using assistive devices like walkers, often sharing common spaces with other residents whose conditions and behaviors vary. The activity room. The dining room. Spaces where residents move past each other, sit near each other, exist in proximity to each other every day.
The facility's own documentation does not explain when it first became aware that Resident R1 had a history of physical aggression, or what steps, if any, were taken before May 15 to manage that risk in shared spaces. The inspection record notes that the nursing evaluation on the afternoon of the assault recommended a room transfer. It does not say whether that transfer happened, or how quickly.
What it says is that on September 24, 2025, at 3:00 in the afternoon, the Director of Nursing sat down with inspectors and confirmed that the facility had failed. One resident. Four months earlier. Grabbed by the wrist. Struck twice.
The Director of Nursing confirmed that the facility failed to ensure that Resident R3 was free from abuse perpetrated by a resident with aggressive behaviors.
That sentence is in the record because someone had to say it out loud.
The deficiency was cited under Pennsylvania state codes covering the responsibility of the licensee, facility management, and nursing services. It is a complaint inspection, meaning someone reported a concern and investigators came to look at it. The inspection was completed September 25, 2025.
What the record does not contain is Resident R3's account of what happened in that activity room. It does not contain her name, her age, how long she had been at the facility, what she was recovering from, or whether she had encountered Resident R1 before. It does not say whether she was frightened afterward, whether she asked to be moved, whether anyone sat with her. The progress note from 1:56 p.m. records that she was struck. The witness statement records that she was seated into a chair. After that, in the documentation available from this inspection, she disappears.
She was trying to walk past with her walker.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Highland Hills Post Acute from 2025-09-25 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: June 27, 2026 · Our methodology
HIGHLAND HILLS POST ACUTE in PITTSBURGH, PA was cited for violations during a health inspection on September 25, 2025.
The Director of Nursing confirmed 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.