Valley Healthcare Center: Call System Failures - CA
Inspectors visited the facility on January 27, 2026, and checked both of its shower rooms. Neither one had a working call system.
In the shower room serving station 3, there was nothing at all. No button, no bell, no cord. The maintenance supervisor, who walked through the rooms with inspectors that afternoon, said plainly that no call system was available for residents using the toilet or shower there. He said there should have been one.
The shower room in station 2 had a black wireless call button hanging from the hand rail beside the toilet. It had a bell logo on it. The maintenance supervisor pressed it. He walked to the nurses station. No alarm sounded. The button was there, but it wasn't connected to anything that mattered.
The supervisor told inspectors the wireless buttons had been disappearing. Staff would replace them, and they would go missing again. He said there should have been a functional call system in the shower rooms. He said he would replace the button.
The Director of Nursing, interviewed the following day, did not describe this as a recent breakdown. She said the call system had not been working in the shower rooms and that it had been an ongoing issue at the facility. She named two residents who had been using the toilet in the station 3 shower room, the one with nothing in it at all. She said both were at risk for falls. She said that without a call system, residents would be at risk for accidents and falls.
One of those residents is Resident 85. A fall risk assessment from December 9, 2025, gave him a score of 55 on the Morse Fall Scale. Any score of 45 or above means high risk.
The other is Resident 14. His fall risk score, recorded December 31, 2025, was 60. A separate assessment from the same date showed a Brief Interview for Mental Status score of 6, which indicates severe cognitive impairment.
Resident 14 spoke with inspectors on January 28. He said he was able to control his bladder and that he independently used the toilet in the station 3 shower room. He said there was no call system in there. He was describing, without apparent alarm, a situation the facility's own Director of Nursing had just characterized as dangerous.
The facility's own written policy, last updated in November 2017, states that call bells in resident bathrooms are considered emergency calls because of the potential for falls and injury, and that they must be answered promptly. The policy also states that if the primary call system becomes inoperable, the facility must provide a bell for each resident room. The shower rooms are not resident rooms, but the policy's logic is plain: residents in toileting and bathing areas need a way to reach staff, and the facility is responsible for making sure that way exists.
In station 3, it did not exist at all. In station 2, it existed in name only, a button that triggered nothing.
The Director of Nursing acknowledged the problem. The maintenance supervisor acknowledged the problem. The facility's own paperwork acknowledged the problem, in policy language written nearly a decade ago. What the inspection captured was not a surprise failure or a broken part discovered that afternoon. It was an ongoing condition that staff at multiple levels of the facility already knew about, and that a man with a fall risk score of 60 and severe cognitive impairment was navigating alone, every time he needed to use the bathroom.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Valley Healthcare Center 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
VALLEY HEALTHCARE CENTER in BAKERSFIELD, CA was cited for violations during a health inspection on January 29, 2026.
Inspectors visited the facility on January 27, 2026, and checked both of its shower rooms.
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.