Third Avenue Health & Rehab: Missed Meals Cited - PA
It was 8:05 in the morning on March 25, 2026. The food cart sat in the hallway just outside their shared room. The nurse aide who had delivered the roommate's tray told inspectors she hadn't seen a tray for the other resident and noted that trays aren't always placed on the cart in room number order. The Food Service Director, who arrived on the unit at that moment, confirmed the tray should have been there. She went back to the kitchen to have a meal prepared. The resident received her breakfast at 8:15 AM, ten minutes after inspectors first observed her without it.
The cause, the Food Service Director explained the next morning, was a missing meal ticket. The facility uses a computerized program that prints a ticket for each resident at each meal, identifying their ordered diet. Those tickets are counted before service goes out. Resident 66's ticket hadn't been generated, so no tray was made, and the cart left the kitchen without it.
The administrator confirmed to inspectors on March 26 that timely meal delivery is expected and that a ticket is to be printed for every resident at every meal. The system, in other words, was designed to prevent exactly this. It didn't.
What inspectors found next was harder to dismiss as a single computer error.
During a group interview that same morning, two other residents said missed trays weren't new to them. Resident 23 said it had happened just the week before. Resident 8 said it occurs once in a while. Both said the same thing about what happens when they speak up: they tell a nurse, the kitchen sends a tray, and the problem resolves for that meal. Neither reported going without food entirely. But both described a pattern the facility had not managed to stop.
The Food Service Director acknowledged the process for handling complaints, that when staff notify the kitchen a resident didn't receive a tray, a meal is prepared and delivered. That's the recovery system. What inspectors cited was the absence of a reliable system to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place.
Third Avenue Health & Rehab Center is a 702 Third Avenue facility in Kingston, Pennsylvania. The inspection was completed March 27, 2026. The deficiency was cited under Pennsylvania Department of Health management regulations and rated at the lower end of the harm scale, meaning inspectors determined the failures caused minimal harm or the potential for actual harm to a few residents.
Minimal harm is a regulatory classification. For Resident 66, it meant sitting in a semi-private room, alert and oriented, watching her roommate's food go cold while hers didn't exist yet. She had told staff she preferred to eat in her room rather than the dining room. The accommodation was in place. The meal was not.
The inspection report does not say how long Resident 23 waited the week prior, or how many times Resident 8 has gone through the cycle of noticing the missing tray, flagging it, and waiting for a replacement. It does not say whether either resident has a condition that makes delayed eating more than an inconvenience. Those details weren't recorded, or weren't asked.
What the report does say is that the facility's own counting system, designed specifically to catch missing tickets before carts leave the kitchen, failed on at least the morning inspectors were watching. And that two residents, unprompted, described a problem that predated that morning by at least a week.
The Food Service Director did not dispute any of it.
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 8:05 in the morning on March 25, 2026.
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.