Las Alturas de Penitas: Expired Food Violations - TX
When inspectors arrived at Las Alturas de Penitas on May 28, 2026, they found expired food stored in the personal refrigerators of at least two residents. The Director of Nursing couldn't say which manager had been assigned to check Resident 13's room or Resident 43's room. That was because, as the administrator later explained, no one had been assigned at all.
The administrator told inspectors that resident refrigerators were supposed to be checked daily, with specific managers responsible for specific rooms. He said the facility had been training new management staff and, during that stretch, had never gotten around to assigning anyone to those rooms. Staff, he said, were supposed to be checking them. Whether anyone actually had been, he couldn't say.
When asked what might have happened if Resident 13 or Resident 43 had eaten the expired food, the administrator said he didn't know. Then he added that nothing had happened.
That is a meaningful distinction, and not the one he appeared to think he was making. The food was there. It was expired. The residents had access to it. Whether either person reached into that refrigerator and ate something before inspectors walked in is not something the inspection record can confirm or rule out. What the record does confirm is that the system meant to prevent exactly that had quietly stopped functioning, and no one in management had noticed.
Inspectors classified the violation as causing minimal harm or potential for actual harm, affecting a small number of residents. The specific harm they identified was concrete: diarrhea or food poisoning from consuming expired food. For an elderly nursing home resident, neither of those is trivial. Foodborne illness in older adults can escalate quickly, particularly for anyone with a compromised immune system, diabetes, heart disease, or kidney problems, conditions common enough in a long-term care population that the risk doesn't need to be theoretical to be serious.
The facility's own food storage policy, dated January 1, 2026, five months before this inspection, required that all refrigerated foods be dated, labeled, and stored in clean, sealed containers. The policy existed. The training gap that let expired food accumulate in two residents' rooms existed at the same time.
That is the shape of the problem at Las Alturas de Penitas. It is not a facility without policies. It is a facility where the gap between a written policy and daily practice had opened up wide enough that two residents were sitting within arm's reach of food that should have been thrown out, and the people responsible for preventing that couldn't name who was supposed to have caught it.
The administrator's explanation, that they were onboarding new management and hadn't completed assignments yet, describes a transition period. Transitions are normal. What is less normal is allowing a daily food safety check to go unassigned and unnoticed during one, without any backup system, without any confirmation that the checks were happening at all, without anyone asking the question until federal inspectors did.
The Director of Nursing didn't know. The administrator didn't know. Staff were "supposed to be" checking. That phrase did a lot of work in this inspection.
Resident 13 and Resident 43 are identified in the inspection record only by number. The report does not describe their conditions, their diets, or whether either of them ever opened those refrigerators during the period when no manager was assigned to check them. It records only that the food was expired when inspectors found it, that the potential for harm was real, and that the people running the facility had no answer for how long things had been that way.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Las Alturas De Penitas from 2026-05-28 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Additional Resources
Data source: This article is based on inspection data downloaded directly from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) via Medicare.gov. CMS releases inspection reports in bulk; we publish the findings as documented by state surveyors in the official Form CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies.
Plan of correction: The CMS report we receive does not include the facility's plan of correction. Facilities submit plans of correction separately to state survey agencies and those responses may not be reflected in CMS data at the time of publication. The absence of a plan of correction in our data does not mean one was not filed. Readers who want information about corrective steps taken are encouraged to contact the facility directly or their state survey agency.
Corrections may have occurred: Inspection reports reflect conditions observed on the date of the survey. Facilities may have implemented corrections, staffing changes, additional training, or other remediation since the report was issued. We report what CMS provides and encourage readers to seek current information from the facility.
Editorial process: Inspection findings are extracted from CMS source documents and synthesized using AI, reviewed for factual accuracy against the original report by our editorial team.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: August 8, 2026 · Our methodology
LAS ALTURAS DE PENITAS in PENITAS, TX was cited for violations during a health inspection on May 28, 2026.
When inspectors arrived at Las Alturas de Penitas on May 28, 2026, they found expired food stored in the personal refrigerators of at least two residents.
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.