Third Avenue Health & Rehab: Bathroom Rights Denied - PA
A resident at Third Avenue Health & Rehab Center had been told, when she asked why she couldn't use the bathroom connected to her own bedroom, that the wheelchair wouldn't fit through the doorway. It was the only explanation anyone had given her. She had accepted it, or at least lived with it, making the trip down the hall to a shower room commode every time she needed to urinate, a transfer requiring staff assistance each time.
When inspectors visited on March 25, 2026, they watched her wheelchair pass through the bedroom doorway without obstruction.
The resident, identified in inspection records only as Resident 8, is a diabetic amputee who lost her left leg above the knee. She had been living at the facility since her admission date, which the report does not specify, and her most recent cognitive assessment, completed in December 2025, found her fully intact, scoring a 14 out of 15 on a standardized memory and orientation test. She understood her situation. She had preferences. Nobody had asked about them.
"I would feel more comfortable using the bathroom in my room," she told inspectors during an interview at 11:00 AM on March 25. She described being transferred instead to a commode in the shower room down the hall. She said she didn't know why the restriction existed. The wheelchair explanation was all she had been given, and even that, she had apparently received informally, not through any documented conversation or care planning process.
The next morning, inspectors sat down with the facility's occupational therapist and its Director of Nursing. The occupational therapist offered a different explanation than the one the resident had been given: the bathroom didn't have enough space for the transfer equipment needed to move the resident safely on and off the toilet. The shower room provided more room to work. It was a clinical rationale, and it may have been a legitimate one. But neither the occupational therapist nor the Director of Nursing could produce a single document showing that rationale had ever been shared with the resident herself.
The care plan dated December 16, 2025, contained none of it. No documented explanation of the restriction. No safety concerns put in writing. No alternatives that had been considered and rejected. No expected duration, no plan to reassess whether the resident's condition or the bathroom setup might eventually allow her to use her own toilet. Nothing confirming she had been told what was happening, or why, or for how long.
Nothing showing she had been asked what she wanted.
That absence is the core of what inspectors cited. Under Pennsylvania and federal standards, a cognitively intact nursing home resident has the right to be informed about decisions affecting her care and to participate in making them. A restriction on something as basic as bathroom access, particularly for a resident who has already lost a limb and depends on staff for mobility, is precisely the kind of decision that requires a documented conversation, a real one, not a hallway comment about wheelchair widths.
The occupational therapist's explanation, offered to inspectors the day after the resident interview, had apparently never reached the resident in any formal way. There was no record of a meeting, no signed acknowledgment, no note in the care plan reflecting that the resident had been walked through the clinical reasoning and given a chance to weigh in. The facility could not demonstrate, in writing or otherwise, that Resident 8 had ever understood why she was being redirected down the hall, or that she had agreed to it, or even that she had been told it might eventually change.
The inspection report rated the violation at the minimal harm level, meaning inspectors did not find evidence that the restriction had caused physical injury. That classification reflects the regulatory framework, not the full weight of what was found. A woman who has already lost a leg, who is cognitively sharp enough to describe her own preferences clearly and accurately to a stranger with a clipboard, was denied basic information about a decision governing her own body. She was given a false explanation, or at least an incomplete one, and left to assume it was the whole story.
She told inspectors she would be more comfortable in her own bathroom. That preference was documented for the first time in an inspection report, not in her care plan.
The facility serves residents at 702 Third Avenue in Kingston, a small city in Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania. The inspection was completed March 27, 2026, and covered 17 residents. Resident 8 was the only one cited in this finding.
Whether the bathroom restriction was clinically appropriate, inspectors did not determine. That question was not before them. What was before them was simpler and harder to explain: a resident who didn't know why she couldn't use her own toilet, a care plan that offered no answer, and a wheelchair that fit through the door the whole time.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Third Avenue Health & Rehab Center from 2026-03-27 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Additional Resources
Data source: Official federal inspection data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Editorial process: AI-synthesized regulatory data, reviewed for accuracy by our editorial team.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: June 18, 2026 · Our methodology
THIRD AVENUE HEALTH & REHAB CENTER in KINGSTON, PA was cited for violations during a health inspection on March 27, 2026.
It was the only explanation anyone had given her.
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.