ARC at Cincinnati: Expired Medications, Fridge Failures - OH
Twelve of the syringes had expired in July 2022. Nine had expired in April 2023. Four more in March 2023. None had been opened. All were sitting there anyway.
Inspectors found them during a complaint inspection at the 92-resident facility on Rosslyn Drive. The heparin lock flush solution, used to keep intravenous lines clear and prevent clotting, was the most striking find in a medication room that revealed broader failures in how the facility tracked, stored, and monitored its drugs.
The problems extended past the shelves. Forty minutes after finding the expired heparin, inspectors walked to the medication refrigerator on the same unit and found no thermometer inside. The refrigerator held nine Lantus insulin flex pens, nine insulin aspart flex pens, five Basaglar long-acting insulin pens, three Trulicity diabetic medication pens, and four Bonsity osteoporosis injection pens. Insulin requires consistent refrigeration to remain effective. Without a thermometer, nobody could confirm the temperature had held.
Then inspectors checked the logs.
The November 2025 temperature log for that unit showed staff had recorded a check on November 8 and again on November 9. After that, nothing for the rest of the month. The December log covered the period from December 1 through December 15. It was blank.
The Elm Unit's refrigerator log told a similar story. Staff had recorded daily checks from November 1 through November 19. Then the entries stopped. No documentation for November 20 through November 30. The December log showed no recorded checks from December 1 through December 15, and nothing again from December 18 through December 23, the last day of the inspection.
Inspectors also found expired medications on the Elm Unit medication cart: a tube of Solosite wound gel expired September 1, 2025, a saline enema expired November 2025, and a tube of zinc oxide ointment expired October 2025.
When inspectors spoke with a licensed practical nurse at 11:10 that morning, she said night shift nurses were responsible for checking the refrigerators and logging temperatures each night, and that all nurses were responsible for watching for expired medications.
The Director of Nursing said the same thing that afternoon. Night shift nurses were supposed to check the refrigerators daily and confirm a thermometer was present each time. Then she added something else: she was unsure whether staff had actually been trained on who was responsible for checking the medication rooms and refrigerators for expired items.
A second nurse, interviewed two days later, offered a different version of how the responsibility was supposed to work. She said the task had previously been shared between day shift and night shift nurses. She had only recently been told that night shift would take it over exclusively.
Nobody disputed what the logs showed. For weeks across both units, the checks either didn't happen or weren't recorded. The facility's own policy, last revised in February 2023, assigned nursing staff responsibility for maintaining medication storage areas and required contacting the dispensing pharmacy when medications were outdated or discontinued. The heparin syringes had been expired for more than two years when inspectors found them.
The inspection covered residents on two units. With a census of 92, the expired and improperly stored medications had the potential to affect everyone living there.
Insulin that has been stored outside the proper temperature range can lose potency without any visible sign of degradation. A patient injecting a compromised dose has no way of knowing the medication isn't working until blood sugar fails to respond. For diabetic residents managing their condition through the insulin pens sitting in that unmonitored refrigerator, the stakes of a broken cold chain are not abstract.
The Director of Nursing did not know whether her staff had been trained on one of the most basic tasks in medication management. The logs sat empty for weeks. And on the morning inspectors arrived, a shelf in the medication room held two-year-old heparin, still in its packaging, still in reach.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Arc At Cincinnati from 2025-12-23 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 20, 2026 · Our methodology
ARC AT CINCINNATI in CINCINNATI, OH was cited for violations during a health inspection on December 23, 2025.
Twelve of the syringes had expired in July 2022.
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.