Columbia Crest Center: Alcohol Monitoring Failures - WA
That was the finding of a complaint inspection completed November 17, 2025. Inspectors documented that licensed nurses had been recording the number of beers dispensed to the resident, identified in the report as Resident 3, but that it was not the facility's practice to review the total amount of alcohol the resident consumed in a day. A physician had ordered a plan to monitor, document, and reduce the resident's alcohol consumption. As of October 1, 2025, that plan had not been put into action.
The Director of Nursing confirmed it during an interview that afternoon. The implementation and documentation, she said, should have been done prior to that date.
The administrator said the same thing, in slightly different terms. He was aware of the resident's alcohol consumption and aware of the monitoring plan. He was not aware the plan was not being followed.
What was being followed, instead, was a different approach entirely. According to a licensed nurse interviewed that morning, staff had been instructed to notify local law enforcement if and when Resident 3 appeared intoxicated and chose to leave the facility in their personal vehicle.
That was the safety plan: watch for signs of intoxication, then call police.
A nursing assistant described what departure actually looked like for this resident. Resident 3 required help loading a wheelchair into their personal vehicle before leaving. The resident did not use the facility's sign-out sheet when leaving or returning. Staff tracked the comings and goings through verbal report alone.
The inspection cited the violation under Washington state regulation WAC 388-97-1060 and rated it at a level of minimal harm or potential for actual harm, affecting a few residents.
That rating reflects the regulatory framework's assessment of documented harm. It does not change what the records show: a nursing home that received a physician's order to actively reduce a resident's alcohol intake, built no system to count how much that resident was drinking each day, and treated the prospect of an intoxicated resident driving away from the building as a matter for law enforcement rather than for staff.
The log book entries kept accumulating. Beers out, documented. Beers consumed in total, unknown.
The Director of Nursing told inspectors that Resident 3 had been non-compliant with a lot of the facility's attempts to monitor their safety. That framing places the difficulty on the resident. The physician's order, though, was not directed at the resident. It was directed at the facility. The order called for implementation and documentation of a reduction plan. The administrator's own statement confirmed that plan was never implemented.
There is a difference between a resident who resists monitoring and a facility that never built the monitoring in the first place.
Nursing homes do sometimes care for residents who drink. Residents retain rights to make personal choices, including choices that carry risk. Facilities navigating that tension are expected to document the risks, involve physicians, and put agreed-upon safety measures into practice. Here, the physician had already weighed in. The order existed. The log book was open. Someone was writing in it every time a beer went out.
They just weren't reading what they'd written.
Resident 3 left the facility in a personal vehicle on outings, with a nursing assistant's help loading the wheelchair, while staff tracked the absence through word of mouth. Whether the resident drove after drinking, and how often, is not something the log book could have answered. The facility wasn't calculating totals. The question was, by design, unanswerable.
The plan for what to do if something went wrong was to call the police.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Columbia Crest Center from 2025-11-17 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 1, 2026 · Our methodology
COLUMBIA CREST CENTER in MOSES LAKE, WA was cited for violations during a health inspection on November 17, 2025.
That was the finding of a complaint inspection completed November 17, 2025.
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.