Lakeland Rehab: Expired Juice Served to Residents - IN
The juice was labeled. The expiration date read 5/23/26. The inspection happened on 5/26/26. No one had thrown it out.
Sitting next to it on the same cart was a pitcher of chocolate milk with no label at all — no date, no contents, nothing to indicate when it had been poured or how long it had been there. Both pitchers were being used to serve drinks to residents. All 69 people living in the facility ate and drank what came out of that kitchen.
When a cook moved the drink cart into the walk-in cooler during the inspection, both pitchers went with it — the expired juice and the unlabeled milk, together, headed back into cold storage rather than to the trash.
The cook explained that the chocolate milk hadn't been labeled because the pitcher had been filled that morning. The Dietary Manager, present during the tour, said that wasn't an acceptable reason. The milk should have been labeled. The juice, the manager said, should have been discarded.
The facility's own food safety policy, written in 2001, states that all food items must be labeled, dated, and monitored to ensure they are used before their expiration date or thrown out. The apple juice had a label. It had a date. Someone had read that date and left the pitcher on the cart anyway.
The problems in the kitchen didn't stop at the drink cart.
During a walkthrough of the kitchen that began at 9:18 that same morning, the inspector observed moisture between three of the five steam table pans in view. The pans were wet and had been stored that way. The Dietary Manager said they had probably just come out of the dishwasher.
When the inspector pressed further, the manager's explanation was direct: they were unaware that pans had to be dried before being put away. Wet pans stored together create conditions where bacteria can grow between surfaces, in the trapped moisture that doesn't evaporate when containers are stacked and sealed against each other.
The manager did not dispute what the inspector found. On the steam pans, the response was that they weren't soiled, just wet.
The distinction matters less than the practice. Moisture between stored food-contact surfaces is a sanitation failure regardless of whether visible contamination is present. The Dietary Manager, by their own account, simply had not known the pans needed to be dried first.
That gap in knowledge had been present long enough that no one in the kitchen had corrected it before inspectors arrived.
The violations were cited at the lowest level of harm — minimal harm or potential for actual harm — and the deficiency affected the entire resident population. Sixty-nine people. Every meal, every drink, every day that the kitchen operated this way.
Lakeland Rehab and Healthcare Center is located at 500 N. Williams Street in Angola, in the northeastern corner of Indiana. The inspection was completed June 1, 2026.
The Dietary Manager knew the policy. The facility had written it down in 2001. Twenty-five years later, expired juice was on the cart, unlabeled milk sat beside it, and the person responsible for the kitchen didn't know wet pans needed to be dried before storage.
The pitcher of apple juice, three days expired, was still in the walk-in cooler when the inspector left.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Lakeland Rehab and Healthcare Center from 2026-06-01 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 19, 2026 · Our methodology
LAKELAND REHAB AND HEALTHCARE CENTER in ANGOLA, IN was cited for violations during a health inspection on June 1, 2026.
The expiration date read 5/23/26.
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.