Avir at New Braunfels: Food Safety Failures Found - TX
The facility's own registered dietitian nutritionist had toured the kitchen in both November and December of 2025 and found the same problems both times: unlabeled and undated items in the refrigerator, blanks in the food temperature logs, and staff handling the temperature probe incorrectly. She said she talked to food service staff after each visit, including the dietary manager, and sent a written report about her findings to the Director of Dining Services and the administrator.
The administrator said she never received it.
During an interview on the afternoon of December 31, the dietitian described what the temperature logging failures actually meant for residents. Staff had a habit, she said, of jotting temperatures on a piece of paper during meal service and then not transferring them to the official record. The result was that no one could determine whether residents had been served food held at safe temperatures or not. She said she believed, based on the blank log entries she observed, that temperatures had simply been missed on some occasions.
The Sani-Cloth issue was more direct. The dietitian explained that the wipes are not food-grade, meaning they contain chemicals that are not intended to contact surfaces that touch food. When staff used them to wipe the temperature probe between food items, those chemicals could transfer to the next food the probe touched. She said she had told staff how important it was to follow food sanitation guidelines and that Sani-Cloths were not an acceptable substitute. The correct method, she said, was to use a napkin or paper towel followed by a probe wipe. She had not personally observed staff using the Sani-Cloths but learned during the inspection that it had been happening.
The facility's Director of Nursing and its administrator, interviewed together that afternoon, acknowledged the labeling failures. The Director of Nursing said food that had not been labeled or dated could be spoiled and could cause foodborne illness if consumed. Neither had received any reports of foodborne illness among residents. When asked about the Sani-Cloth issue, the Director of Nursing said she was unable to answer how using them could affect residents.
Both said they had not received a report from the dietitian.
The dietitian said she had sent one.
The unlabeled refrigerator items were a recurring finding, not a one-time lapse. The dietitian found them in November. She raised the issue with staff and the dietary manager. She sent her report. She returned in December and found them again. She raised the issue again. The same report went out again. By the time inspectors arrived on December 31, the problems she had flagged in writing, twice, to the people responsible for fixing them, remained unaddressed, and the administrator said she had never seen the reports.
The facility's own food service policy, revised in November 2022, states that cross-contamination can occur when harmful substances, including chemicals, are transferred to food by surfaces or utensils that have not been adequately cleaned, and that thermometers used to verify food temperatures must be clean, sanitized, and calibrated. The policy also requires that temperatures of foods held in steam tables be monitored throughout meal service.
The inspectors cited the violations as causing minimal harm or the potential for actual harm, with some residents affected.
What the inspection does not resolve is how long staff had been using the Sani-Cloths on the probe before anyone outside the kitchen knew about it, or how many meal services went unlogged on the scraps of paper that were never recorded. The dietitian's November report went somewhere. Her December report went somewhere. Neither, according to the administrator, arrived.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Avir At New Braunfels from 2025-12-31 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 19, 2026 · Our methodology
Avir at New Braunfels in New Braunfels, TX was cited for violations during a health inspection on December 31, 2025.
The administrator said she never received it.
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.