Three Creeks Post Acute: Food Safety Immediate Jeopardy - WA
The outage started at 5:10 AM and lasted until 3:30 PM, a span of more than ten hours. Staff were told to keep the appliance doors closed. Nobody took temperatures inside the refrigerators or freezer during those ten hours. Nobody knew whether the food inside was safe.
The dietary manager came to work at 2:00 PM, about ninety minutes before power was restored. They did not check temperatures when they arrived. They did not check when the power came back on.
What they did know came from a text. A colleague had messaged them that one refrigerator had reached 50 degrees Fahrenheit and that there was milk inside. The dietary manager served that milk with dinner on December 17. They served it again with breakfast the next morning.
No food was discarded after the power outage.
Inspectors from the Washington State Department of Health arrived on December 18 and rated the violation immediate jeopardy, the most serious classification available, meaning the failure created a risk of serious harm or death to residents. Many residents were affected.
When inspectors opened the refrigerator that staff had identified as having exceeded safe temperature limits, they found milk containers with dates written on them showing the milk had been in the facility since before December 16. The temperature log for December 17 had been lined out in red marker. In the column asking what was done when temperatures fell outside acceptable range, someone had written "OO service." The same notation appeared on the second refrigerator's log and on the freezer log for that day.
In an interview on December 18, the dietary manager told inspectors they had decided the second refrigerator was probably fine because the door had not been opened during the outage. They said they knew what was in the refrigerators because they had dated the items when they arrived. They said the freezer items appeared frozen solid when they checked, so they kept those too.
The administrator in training told inspectors on the morning of December 18 that the building's generator was old and did not supply power to the kitchen or to the heating system during outages. A new generator, they said, had been on the purchasing list since a change in ownership in June 2025. As of that morning, the administrator said they had not known that any refrigerator had exceeded 45 degrees on December 17 and had not known that no food was thrown out.
By 1:00 PM that same day, after inspectors had been in the building for hours, the administrator confirmed both facts.
The director of nursing told inspectors on December 18 that staff would monitor residents for signs and symptoms of foodborne illness. When inspectors returned on December 22, the director said all residents present on December 17 had been monitored and no concerns had been identified.
Foodborne illness in elderly residents, particularly those in nursing facilities, can present days after exposure and can escalate quickly. The residents at Three Creeks ate the milk. The facility watched them afterward and reported seeing nothing wrong.
The generator that failed to power the kitchen was already known to be inadequate before December 17. It had been flagged for replacement six months earlier. On the morning the outage began, at 5:10 AM, that replacement had not happened.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Three Creeks Post Acute from 2025-12-22 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Download the official CMS inspection PDF from Medicare.gov
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 19, 2026 · Our methodology
Three Creeks Post Acute in PULLMAN, WA was cited for immediate jeopardy violations during a health inspection on December 22, 2025.
The outage started at 5:10 AM and lasted until 3:30 PM, a span of more than ten hours.
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.