Cedar Creek Nursing: Advance Directive Rights Failure - TX
During a standard health inspection completed on May 8, 2026, inspectors cited Cedar Creek for failing to honor residents' rights to request, refuse, or discontinue treatment, to decide whether they participate in experimental research, and to formulate an advance directive. The citation fell under a category the government classifies as a resident rights deficiency, one of the most fundamental categories in nursing home oversight because it concerns not clinical error but whether a facility respects what residents have already said they want.
The deficiency was assigned a scope and severity level of D, meaning inspectors characterized it as isolated and found no actual harm. But the federal rating system at that level still requires a finding of potential for more than minimal harm. For a violation involving advance directives, that language carries weight. An advance directive is the document a person completes to specify what medical interventions they want, or do not want, if they become unable to speak for themselves. Failing to follow one is not a paperwork problem.
Cedar Creek was cited for five deficiencies total during the May inspection. The advance directive finding was among them.
What makes the citation harder to dismiss is what came after it. As of the inspection record, Cedar Creek had submitted no plan of correction. Facilities that receive deficiency citations are required to submit written plans detailing how they will fix the identified problem and when. Cedar Creek had not done that. The violation stood open, with no documented commitment to address it.
The inspection report does not name the residents involved, does not describe the specific circumstances in which their rights were not honored, and does not indicate how many people were affected. What it does confirm is that inspectors found the problem real enough to cite, and that the facility, weeks later, had taken no formal step to resolve it.
Advance directives and treatment refusal rights sit at the center of what it means to have control over your own body in a medical setting. Nursing home residents, many of whom are elderly, cognitively impaired, or in declining health, are among the people most likely to have completed such documents and most dependent on staff to follow them. The directive may say do not resuscitate. It may say no feeding tube. It may say stop dialysis. Whatever it says, the resident wrote it, or had someone write it for them, because they wanted it followed.
When a facility fails in this area, the inspection record does not always explain why. Sometimes staff are unaware a directive exists. Sometimes documentation is not accessible at the moment a decision needs to be made. Sometimes a family member's wishes override the resident's recorded ones, and no one intervenes. The Cedar Creek report does not say which of these happened, or something else entirely.
What the report does say is that five deficiencies were found, that one of them directly concerned residents' legal right to control their own medical care, and that the facility had not, as of the inspection record, told anyone what it planned to do about it.
Bandera is a small city in the Texas Hill Country, about an hour northwest of San Antonio. Cedar Creek is the kind of facility that serves a rural community where options for long-term care are limited and families often have few alternatives. That context does not change what inspectors found. It does mean that the residents living there have fewer places to turn.
The inspection record closes with the deficiency unresolved and the correction status unchanged.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Cedar Creek Nursing and Rehabilitation Center from 2026-05-08 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
CEDAR CREEK NURSING AND REHABILITATION CENTER in BANDERA, TX was cited for violations during a health inspection on May 8, 2026.
The deficiency was assigned a scope and severity level of D, meaning inspectors characterized it as isolated and found no actual harm.
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.