Cottonwood Nursing & Rehab: Cold Food Complaints - TX
When a state inspector arrived on January 29, the Dietary Manager sat down with a test tray at 12:30 in the afternoon and demonstrated the problem herself. Regular diet, mechanical diet, pureed diet. All of it lukewarm.
The Dietary Manager told the inspector she sometimes watched to make sure the cook was checking food temperatures during preparation, but not regularly. She received temperature logs from the kitchen staff at the end of each shift, she said, but wasn't present when those readings were actually taken. She acknowledged the consequence plainly: if the food was too cold, residents wouldn't want to eat, and they would lose weight. When the inspector asked for the temperature logs from breakfast and lunch that morning, the Dietary Manager couldn't produce them. They didn't exist.
The cook who had been working at the facility for four months told the inspector he checked the temperature of cooked food when he pulled it off the stove, and that the readings came in well above the required 165 degrees. But no one verified his numbers. He turned in the paperwork at the end of his shift and that was the end of it. He said he had never been instructed on when to check the temperature, or how the monitoring was supposed to work.
The outgoing administrator, informed of the findings at 1:30 that afternoon, said she had spoken with the Dietary Manager and learned the warming plate was malfunctioning. They would get it repaired. She said she would make sure the kitchen was checking temperatures before food went out to residents. She also said she had never received any feedback about cold food. The Resident Council President, who had been raising the issue for six months, said otherwise.
By 2:56 that afternoon, the incoming administrator had been briefed by both the outgoing administrator and the Dietary Manager. She told the inspector they were in the process of training kitchen staff on correct food temperatures and would get the warming plates operational.
Inspectors determined the failure affected 37 of the facility's 39 residents on regular, mechanical, or pureed diets.
The gap between what the temperature logs were supposed to show and what was actually happening captures how the problem persisted so long. The Dietary Manager received paperwork at the end of each day. The cook filled it out. Nobody watched the cook. The warming plate was broken. And the woman who had been telling the Dietary Manager about cold food for half a year watched inspectors arrive and confirm what she had been saying all along.
The inspection report listed the level of harm as minimal, with potential for actual harm. The concern the Dietary Manager herself named, that residents eating cold food would stop eating and lose weight, is the kind of harm that doesn't announce itself. It accumulates.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Cottonwood Nursing & Rehabilitation from 2026-01-29 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
Cottonwood Nursing & Rehabilitation in DENTON, TX was cited for violations during a health inspection on January 29, 2026.
When a state inspector arrived on January 29, the Dietary Manager sat down with a test tray at 12:30 in the afternoon and demonstrated the problem herself.
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.