Westward Trails Nursing: Food Temp Failures - TX
Federal inspectors cited the facility following a November complaint inspection after finding that staff had failed to check food temperatures before meals and failed to record those temperatures on the required logs. The dietary manager told inspectors the lapse could send residents to the hospital.
All but two residents in the facility eat from the kitchen. Those two receive nutrition through feeding tubes. Everyone else depends on the cooks to get it right.
The facility's own policy, in place since 2012, is direct: temperatures of all hot and cold food must be taken before every meal service and recorded on a temperature log. The stated reason is to ensure food is safe and served within acceptable ranges. Inspectors found that wasn't happening.
When inspectors interviewed the dietary manager on November 4 at 2:23 in the afternoon, he didn't dispute it. He said that if food wasn't cooked to the right temperatures, residents could get sick, or they could end up in the hospital. He said he would begin in-servicing staff on the requirement and would have them show him the completed temperature logs before leaving for the day.
He also said the facility had been short-staffed recently.
Then he said that was no excuse.
That admission sits at the center of this inspection. The dietary manager understood the risk, understood the standard, understood that staffing pressure didn't change the obligation, and still the logs weren't being completed. The inspectors rated the violation as affecting many residents, with potential for actual harm.
Undercooked food, or food held at unsafe temperatures, can cause bacterial illness, including infections from salmonella, listeria, and other pathogens that hit elderly residents harder than the general population. Nursing home residents often have weakened immune systems, chronic conditions, or are on medications that reduce their ability to fight infection. A foodborne illness that a younger, healthy adult recovers from in a day can put a frail resident in the hospital. The dietary manager said as much himself.
The fix the dietary manager described, requiring staff to show him the logs before the end of their shift, is a supervision measure that should have been standard practice. The facility's 2012 policy already required the logs. What failed was the follow-through.
Westward Trails is not a large, anonymous institution in a major metropolitan area. Nacogdoches is a city of roughly 33,000 people in East Texas, and a nursing home there is likely serving residents whose families live nearby, who may have limited options for other facilities, and who trust that basic food safety is being maintained without anyone having to ask.
The dietary manager's candor with inspectors is notable. He didn't claim the logs had been completed and lost, or that there was a misunderstanding about the policy. He acknowledged the problem, identified the cause, and outlined a corrective plan on the spot. Whether that plan holds is a question the inspection report doesn't answer.
What the report does answer is simpler and more troubling: for a period of time before this complaint inspection, staff at Westward Trails were sending meals out of the kitchen without confirming those meals were safe to eat. A policy written thirteen years ago said that wasn't acceptable. The dietary manager said it wasn't acceptable. And yet the temperature logs weren't being filled out.
Nearly every person in that building ate those meals.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Westward Trails Nursing and Rehabilitation from 2025-11-20 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 9, 2026 · Our methodology
Westward Trails Nursing and Rehabilitation in NACOGDOCHES, TX was cited for violations during a health inspection on November 20, 2025.
The dietary manager told inspectors the lapse could send residents to the hospital.
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.