Big Horn Rehab: Hospice Access Failures Cited - WY
Federal inspectors who visited Big Horn Rehabilitation and Care Center in May found that the facility had failed to arrange hospice services for residents, or to help residents transfer to a facility that would. That failure was significant enough to draw a formal citation, one of 14 deficiencies inspectors documented during a standard health inspection completed on May 7, 2026.
The facility has submitted no plan of correction.
The citation falls under a category of administration deficiencies, meaning the breakdown wasn't in a nurse's bedside decision or a missed medication. It was institutional. The systems that should connect a dying resident to end-of-life care either weren't working or weren't in place.
Inspectors classified the violation at Scope/Severity Level E, meaning it was a pattern, not an isolated incident, and carried potential for more than minimal harm. No actual harm was documented in the inspection record. But the distinction between "no documented harm" and "no harm" is one that matters most to the people it concerns, and they are rarely in a position to speak for themselves.
Hospice is not a last resort that families stumble toward. It is a coordinated form of care that requires advance arrangement, physician certification, and enrollment with a hospice provider. When a nursing home fails to facilitate that process, residents and their families are left to navigate a complicated system at the worst possible moment, or they receive no hospice care at all.
Big Horn Rehabilitation and Care Center operates in Sheridan, a city of roughly 18,000 in northern Wyoming. For many residents, it is the only skilled nursing facility they will ever know. There is no indication in the inspection record of how many residents were affected by this deficiency, or how long the pattern had been in place before inspectors arrived.
The 14 total deficiencies cited during this inspection place the facility in territory that warrants attention. A single citation can reflect a narrow lapse. Fourteen suggests something broader about how the facility is being run.
What stands out about the hospice citation specifically is what it reveals about a facility's relationship to its most vulnerable residents, those who are no longer expected to recover, whose remaining time is finite, and whose comfort depends entirely on the people and systems around them. Arranging hospice, or helping a resident move somewhere that will, is not a complex medical intervention. It is coordination. It is a phone call, a referral, a conversation with a family. The citation says that conversation wasn't happening the way it should.
The correction status makes the situation harder to interpret charitably. When a facility receives a deficiency citation, it typically submits a plan of correction outlining what went wrong and how it will be fixed. Big Horn has not done that. Whether that reflects an administrative delay, a dispute with the findings, or something else, the inspection record does not say. What it does say is that as of the date of this report, the problem that inspectors identified has no documented path to resolution.
For a family trying to decide whether Big Horn is the right place for an aging parent, that absence is the most concrete fact available. The facility was cited for failing to connect dying residents with hospice care. It has not said how it plans to make sure that doesn't happen again.
The residents who needed hospice care during the period inspectors examined are still waiting, or they are no longer waiting at all.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Big Horn Rehabilitation and Care Center from 2026-05-07 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: July 16, 2026 · Our methodology
Big Horn Rehabilitation and Care Center in Sheridan, WY was cited for violations during a health inspection on May 7, 2026.
The facility has submitted no plan of correction.
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.