Tarzana Health and Rehab: Hiring Screen Failures - CA
They also called two of his co-workers. Nobody called a former employer. Nobody asked anyone in a position to confirm how long the man had worked somewhere, whether he had performed his job adequately, or whether he had ever abused a resident. The facility wrote up a Reference Check Control Form, dated May 11, 2026, and hired him the next day.
Federal inspectors arrived on May 28, 2026, responding to a complaint. What they found in the personnel files was not an isolated lapse. It was a pattern running back at least six years, touching multiple employees across different roles, and accepted at the highest levels of the facility's administration.
The Director of Staff Development, hired in November 2020, had her references checked the same way. Three confidential reference forms, all signed October 30, 2020, showed the facility had contacted the applicant's friends and a co-worker. Not a single former employer appears in the record.
When inspectors sat down with the administrator and the Director of Nursing on the afternoon of May 27, 2026, to go through these files together, the Director of Nursing did not dispute what the records showed. She said that a friend or former co-worker would not be an appropriate source for verifying an applicant's work experience, length of employment, job performance, or history of resident abuse. She said the facility should document the name and title of anyone contacted during a reference check. She said this plainly, while sitting across from the files that showed her facility had not done it.
The administrator went further. He reviewed the Director of Staff Development's file, which showed friends and co-workers listed as references, and defended the practice. A criminal background check had been completed before her hire, he said, and it had come back clean. Friends and co-workers, he argued, could provide information about whether a potential employee had a history of abusing residents. The clean criminal check was sufficient.
It is worth pausing on that argument. A friend asked whether someone has ever abused a nursing home resident is not a neutral source. A co-worker who socializes with the applicant is not a neutral source. A former employer, asked directly and on the record whether someone is eligible for rehire, is a different kind of source entirely. The administrator's position collapsed the distinction between the two.
The following morning, May 28, inspectors went back to the administrator. He told them the facility did not have a policy addressing employment reference checks during the hiring process. He said the issue would be discussed with the facility's consultants. Then he said he was uncertain whether such a policy was even required.
This from the administrator of a licensed nursing facility, whose own job description, dated 2017 and on file at the facility, states that his primary purpose is to direct the day-to-day functions of the facility in accordance with current federal, state, and local standards and regulations, and to ensure the highest degree of quality care for residents at all times. One of his listed administrative duties is to plan, develop, organize, implement, evaluate, and direct the facility's programs.
He was uncertain whether a policy on checking the backgrounds of people hired to care for vulnerable adults was required.
The third file inspectors examined belonged to a different licensed vocational nurse, one whose Reference Check Control Form was dated May 11, 2025, a full year before the inspection. That form listed a friend and two former co-workers as references. Inspectors noted that the form did not indicate any attempt to contact former employers, and that the references listed would not be in a position to provide relevant employment information, including whether the applicant was eligible for rehire or had any history of resident abuse.
Three employees. Three sets of reference checks. Three failures to contact anyone who actually employed these people before Tarzana Health and Rehabilitation did.
The Director of Nursing, to her credit, did not try to explain this away when inspectors pressed her on the second LVN's file. She acknowledged that the form for LVN 4, the nurse hired in May 2026, listed the applicant's wife and two co-workers, but did not record their job titles or positions. She said the facility should attempt to verify work experience, including any abuse history, through appropriate employment references, and should document the name and title of whoever was contacted. She said all of this as a description of what should have happened, not what did.
The facility's own governing body policy, last reviewed April 30, 2026, less than a month before inspectors arrived, states that the governing body is legally responsible for establishing and implementing policies regarding the management and operation of the facility. The administrator's job description from 2017 echoes this: plan, develop, organize, implement, evaluate, and direct the facility's programs and activities in accordance with guidelines issued by the governing board.
The gap between those written commitments and the actual state of the facility's hiring practices is not subtle. There was no policy on employment reference checks. There had apparently never been one. And the administrator, when confronted with this, was not certain a policy was needed at all.
What is harder to measure is what this means for the residents inside the building. The reference check process exists for a specific reason: to catch people with documented histories of harming vulnerable adults before they are given unsupervised access to those adults. A clean criminal background check does not capture every substantiated abuse finding. It does not capture every termination for cause. It does not capture the supervisor at a previous job who would have said, under direct questioning, that this person is not eligible for rehire.
Tarzana Health and Rehabilitation hired its Director of Staff Development in November 2020. The inspection took place in May 2026. For more than five years, the person responsible for training staff on resident care, safety, and abuse prevention was someone whose own pre-employment screening had not included contact with a single former employer.
The administrator said the issue would be taken up with the facility's consultants. He did not say when. He did not say what would change. He said he was uncertain whether a policy was required, and then the interview ended.
The residents at Tarzana Health and Rehabilitation have no way of knowing who was vetted properly before being hired to care for them, and who was hired after someone called their wife.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Tarzana Health and Rehabilitation Center from 2026-05-28 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Download the official CMS inspection PDF from Medicare.gov
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: September 21, 2026 · Our methodology
TARZANA HEALTH AND REHABILITATION CENTER in TARZANA, CA was cited for violations during a health inspection on May 28, 2026.
They also called two of his co-workers.
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.