Altercare Newark South: Expired Medications Found - OH
Inspectors visiting Altercare Newark South on November 24 found it there alongside a collection of other medications that should have been pulled from use weeks or months earlier. There were multivitamins with iron that had expired in October. Four bottles of Vitamin E soft gels, expired since August. Thirty-nine nicotine transdermal patches, also expired in August.
The tuberculin vial was a different kind of problem. It had been opened, which starts a clock on how long the contents remain usable. The facility's own policy, in place since 2020, required staff to place a date-opened sticker on any vial once the original seal was broken and to record a new expiration date. No sticker. No date. No way to know how long it had been sitting there.
The Director of Nursing was present when inspectors made the observations and confirmed the findings.
The lancets in a plastic drawer carried no expiration date at all, which the inspection flagged as a separate concern. Lancets are the small needles used to draw blood for glucose testing, a routine task in a nursing home where diabetes is common among residents. Without an expiration date, staff had no way to assess whether they remained suitable for use.
The facility's own written policy was unambiguous. Expired medications were to be removed from active supply regardless of how much remained. Any vial whose seal had been broken was to be dated immediately. The policy had been in place for five years.
Inspectors classified the violation as causing minimal harm or potential for actual harm, with some residents affected. The inspection was conducted in response to a complaint, logged under complaint number OH002647331.
The expired nicotine patches present a particular concern for the residents who depend on them. Nicotine replacement therapy is used to manage withdrawal symptoms in residents who smoke, and patches that have degraded past their expiration may not deliver a consistent dose. A resident whose withdrawal is inadequately managed can experience agitation, anxiety, and sleep disruption, symptoms that in a nursing home setting can be mistaken for other conditions or addressed with additional medications.
What the inspection report does not say is how long any of these items had been sitting in storage past their expiration dates, or how many residents had been given supplements or patches from the expired stock before inspectors arrived. The Director of Nursing's on-the-spot confirmation of the findings suggests the problem was not discovered through any internal audit or quality check. It took an outside complaint and a federal inspection to surface it.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Altercare Newark South Inc. from 2025-11-24 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: August 24, 2026 · Our methodology
ALTERCARE NEWARK SOUTH INC. in NEWARK, OH was cited for violations during a health inspection on November 24, 2025.
There were multivitamins with iron that had expired in October.
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.