Perry County Nursing Center: ADL Care Failures - MS
The inspection, conducted October 2, 2025, was triggered by a complaint. What inspectors found was not a documentation gap or a paperwork failure. It was a staff member who did not know that a lift designed exclusively for transfers was not a place to change a resident.
The sit-to-stand lift works by raising a person from a seated position to an upright, partially suspended stance so they can be moved from one surface to another. The resident is not lying down. They are not fully supported. The device was built for one purpose.
The staff member told inspectors she was not aware that residents who could not stand on their own should be moved into bed before incontinence care was provided. She described using the lift for transfers. She did not describe it as a problem.
That gap, between what the staff member understood and what the situation required, was what inspectors documented under F0677, which covers a facility's obligation to provide residents with the assistance they need for activities of daily living, including personal hygiene.
When the Director of Nursing was interviewed at 2:55 p.m. on the day of the inspection, she did not dispute any of it. She confirmed that providing incontinence care to a resident suspended in a sit-to-stand lift presented a risk. She confirmed it was inconsistent with standards of practice. She said the lift's purpose was transfers only, and that residents who could not stand without assistance should receive incontinence care in bed. She said nurses and management were responsible for supervising resident care.
She also addressed shaving. Her expectation, she said, was for staff to provide complete personal hygiene care, including shaving male residents during showers unless a resident refused. The inspection report does not detail what inspectors found regarding shaving specifically, but the director's comments suggest it came up during the review of how thoroughly staff were carrying out basic hygiene tasks.
The deficiency was cited at a level of minimal harm or potential for actual harm, affecting a few residents. That language is regulatory shorthand, and it reflects where CMS places the finding on its harm scale. It does not describe what it is like to be a person who cannot stand unassisted, suspended in a mechanical harness, while a staff member attempts to manage incontinence care around you.
Perry County Nursing Center sits on Bay Avenue West in Richton, a small city in Perry County in southern Mississippi. The facility serves residents who, by definition, need help with the most basic physical tasks of daily life. The sit-to-stand lift exists precisely because those residents cannot manage transfers on their own. Its misuse for incontinence care is not a minor procedural detour. It means a vulnerable person was left in an undignified and physically precarious position for a task that required them to be lying flat and fully supported.
The Director of Nursing's acknowledgment was unambiguous. The lift was for transfers. Incontinence care belonged in bed. The staff member doing the care did not know that. And the supervision that was supposed to catch that gap, which the director said was the responsibility of nurses and management, had not caught it before a complaint prompted outside inspectors to arrive.
The inspection report does not say how many residents were affected this way, or for how long. It says a few. It says the harm was minimal or potential. What it does not say is how many times a resident was hoisted into that lift, left suspended, and waited.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Perry County Nursing Center from 2025-10-02 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 10, 2026 · Our methodology
PERRY COUNTY NURSING CENTER in RICHTON, MS was cited for violations during a health inspection on October 2, 2025.
The inspection, conducted October 2, 2025, was triggered by a complaint.
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.