Runnells Center: Meal Tracking Failures for At-Risk Resident - NJ
The resident had a care plan in place since March 21, 2025, specifically targeting nutrition and calling for staff to monitor how much the person ate at each meal. It was not a suggestion buried in a thick chart. It was a documented intervention, assigned to the certified nursing assistants responsible for the resident's daily care.
It was largely ignored.
Inspectors pulled the facility's electronic point-of-care system, where CNAs are supposed to log the percentage of each meal a resident consumes. For July 2025, staff documented meal intake during 16 of 62 shifts. The remaining 46 shifts were blank. In August, the numbers were worse: CNAs recorded intake during just 6 of 62 shifts. Fifty-six entries, nothing.
Over two months, staff responsible for watching what this resident ate left 102 of 124 meal-monitoring entries empty.
The care plan had been in place for months by then. The resident's weight had already triggered concern, though the inspection report identified a separate problem there as well: there was no documentation in the medical record of a re-weight being conducted to verify the original weight variance before staff moved forward with interventions. The facility's own weights policy, dated August 1, 2025, states that a licensed nurse will evaluate all weights obtained and determine whether a re-weight is necessary, then transcribe the result in the re-weight box on the weight record. That step had no documented evidence of completion.
On October 28, four days before the inspection closed, a surveyor sat down with a room full of administrators to walk through both concerns. Present were the Assistant Administrator in Training, the Assistant Director of Nursing, the Regional Director of Nursing, and the Administrator of Behavioral Health, who also holds a licensed nursing home administrator credential. The surveyor laid out the gap in re-weight documentation and the gap in meal monitoring. The administrators offered no documented dispute.
The dietary intake policy, also dated August 1, 2025, was reviewed during the inspection. It states that dietary intake will be monitored by the CNA assigned to a resident for breakfast, lunch, and supper. The policy existed. The care plan existed. The expectation was written down in two separate places.
The charting was still blank.
Weight loss and inadequate nutrition monitoring in nursing home residents carry real consequences. A resident whose intake goes untracked cannot have meaningful changes identified, cannot have interventions adjusted, and cannot have a care team that knows whether the plan is working. For a resident already identified as needing nutritional support, those blank fields are not a paperwork problem.
The violation was cited at a level of minimal harm or potential for actual harm, affecting a small number of residents. The inspection was triggered by a complaint.
What the record reflects is a resident with a documented nutritional concern, a care plan written to address it, and two months of staff largely not following through. Eighty-three percent of the meal-monitoring entries in July were blank. In August, that figure reached ninety percent.
The resident's weight variance, the one that prompted the care plan in the first place, was never formally re-investigated with a documented re-weight before interventions began. Whether that variance reflected a true change in the resident's condition, an error in measurement, or something else, the record does not show anyone went back to find out.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Runnells Center For Rehabilitation & Healthcare from 2025-10-31 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 5, 2026 · Our methodology
RUNNELLS CENTER FOR REHABILITATION & HEALTHCARE in BERKELEY HEIGHTS, NJ was cited for violations during a health inspection on October 31, 2025.
It was not a suggestion buried in a thick chart.
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.