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Foothills Rehabilitation Center: Wall Hole Unfixed for Weeks - AZ

Healthcare Facility
Foothills Rehabilitation Center
Tucson, AZ  ·  2/5 stars

When inspectors arrived on the 200-hall in late March 2026, they found a broken outlet plate cover with jagged edges near the nurse's station, the opening measuring roughly two inches by four inches. The 200-hall is a lockdown unit. The maintenance director, identified in inspection records as Staff #48, told inspectors the problem had been reported to him verbally on March 15, eleven days before the inspection.

"It should have been fixed by now," he said.

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Staff #48 described the risk plainly: someone could get cut. The administrator, Staff #116, went a step further, saying the jagged edges could cause a skin tear for a resident. Neither offered an explanation for why eleven days had passed without a repair on a unit they both characterized as requiring heightened attention.

A charge nurse on the hall, Staff #50, said she hadn't known the hole was there until inspectors pointed it out. She looked at it and described the jagged bottom edge of the broken plate herself, then acknowledged that residents on the unit could attempt to put their hand into the opening.

The hole wasn't the only problem inspectors documented on the 200-hall. Baseboards throughout the corridor were missing or peeling. Staff #50 said a resident had told her she didn't like the appearance of the missing baseboards and that it affected her desire to come out of her room into communal areas. The resident's reluctance to leave her room was, in the charge nurse's telling, a direct consequence of what the hallway looked like.

Staff #48 acknowledged the baseboards too. He said he was aware of them and that they would be fixed. He had been working on renovations to the 200-hall for approximately six months. Outstanding work orders at the time of the inspection included repairs to the main door, hallway painting, and improvements to the dining area.

He said the 200-hall, as it stood, did not constitute a home-like environment. He said the condition of the hall carried an additional risk beyond physical injury: residents feeling bad about their current living situation.

The administrator's account of how maintenance problems were supposed to be handled described a system that depended entirely on staff submitting written work orders. Staff #116 said one of the challenges the facility had encountered was staff not providing those written orders to the maintenance department. The hole in the wall, by the maintenance director's own account, had been reported verbally on March 15 and never converted into a completed repair.

Staff #116 told inspectors that holes in walls are fixed the minute maintenance finds out about them. The inspection record shows that one sat open for at least eleven days on a locked unit, with jagged edges, near a nurse's station.

The 200-hall renovation had been underway for half a year. The maintenance department, Staff #48 said, receives more than twenty work orders a day and prioritizes anything involving resident safety. A broken outlet plate with exposed edges on a lockdown unit, by his own characterization, qualified as exactly that kind of issue.

The resident who told Staff #50 she didn't like the missing baseboards had stopped coming out of her room. That detail appears once in the inspection record, in a single sentence, attributed to the charge nurse. No one followed up on it in the documents. No one described what the resident's days looked like, or how long she had been staying inside.

Full Inspection Report

The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Foothills Rehabilitation Center from 2026-03-28 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.

Additional Resources


Editorial Standards

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

Quick Answer

FOOTHILLS REHABILITATION CENTER in TUCSON, AZ was cited for violations during a health inspection on March 28, 2026.

The 200-hall is a lockdown unit.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened at FOOTHILLS REHABILITATION CENTER?
The 200-hall is a lockdown unit.
How serious are these violations?
Violation severity varies from minor documentation issues to serious safety concerns. Review the inspection report for specific deficiency codes and scope. All violations must be corrected within required timeframes and are subject to follow-up verification inspections.
What should families do?
Families should: (1) Ask facility administration about specific corrective actions taken, (2) Request to see the follow-up inspection report verifying corrections, (3) Check if this represents a pattern by reviewing prior inspection reports, (4) Compare this facility's ratings with other nursing homes in TUCSON, AZ, (5) Report any new concerns directly to state authorities.
Where can I see the full inspection report?
The complete inspection report is available on Medicare.gov's Care Compare website (www.medicare.gov/care-compare). You can also request a copy directly from FOOTHILLS REHABILITATION CENTER or from the state Department of Health. The report includes specific deficiency codes, facility responses, and correction timelines. This facility's federal provider number is 035064.
Has this facility had violations before?
To check FOOTHILLS REHABILITATION CENTER's history, visit Medicare.gov's Care Compare and review their inspection history, quality ratings, and staffing levels. Look for patterns of repeated violations, especially in critical areas like abuse prevention, medication management, infection control, and resident safety.


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