Ararat Nursing Facility: Background Check Failures - CA
A licensed vocational nurse hired in June 2021 had no background check on file either.
All three are currently employed at the facility.
The finding came out of a complaint inspection completed August 13, 2025. Inspectors reviewed employee files and found no documented evidence of criminal background screening for any of the three workers. The deficiency was cited at a level of minimal harm or potential for actual harm, with the potential to place residents at risk for abuse, neglect, exploitation, or misappropriation of property.
The Director of Staff Development explained it plainly when inspectors interviewed her on the morning of August 12. She said the facility did not require background checks for new hires before 2014. She was not working there at the time and does not know what happened. She said she would submit background checks for the three staff members. She also said all staff should have background checks because they need to be cleared from any abuse prior to starting work.
That last part is worth sitting with. The person responsible for staff development at a nursing facility, describing what a background check is for, in the context of three employees who never had one, one of whom has been caring for residents since Bill Clinton's first term.
The administrator confirmed the facility did not conduct background checks before 2014 but could not produce a policy to support that claim.
The Director of Nurses, interviewed the following afternoon, said a background check had been immediately ordered for all three staff members. She said it is important to have background checks because staff need to be cleared of criminal findings and cleared from any abuse.
The facility's own written policy, dated August 1, 2023, states clearly that prior to employment, the facility will verify and document criminal background checks for prospective staff. The policy exists. It was written two years ago. The three employees it should have covered were hired between 1997 and 2021.
There is a gap in that logic that the inspection report does not resolve. The 2023 policy covers prospective staff. The RN and the CNA were hired in the late 1990s, long before the policy was written. The LVN was hired in 2021, two years before the policy was dated but seven years after the administrator says the facility began requiring checks. The inspection report does not explain why the LVN, hired in 2021, has no background check on file. The Director of Staff Development's explanation, that the facility didn't require checks before 2014, does not account for an employee hired in 2021.
That discrepancy sits in the record without an answer.
Background checks for nursing home employees exist because the people being cared for are among the most vulnerable in any community. Residents in skilled nursing facilities are often unable to leave on their own, unable to clearly communicate what is happening to them, and dependent on staff for the most basic functions of daily life. A criminal history check is one of the few tools a facility has before a stranger is given access to those residents, their rooms, their medications, and their bodies.
The RN hired in 1997 has been in that position for 28 years. The CNA hired in 1998 has been there for 27. Whatever is or is not in their histories, the facility never looked. The inspection report does not say anything was ever found to be wrong with either employee's conduct. It says only that the check was never done.
That is its own kind of problem. A background check not conducted is not a background check that came back clean. It is an absence of information that the facility, by its own current policy and by the account of its own Director of Nurses, considers essential before anyone is allowed near a resident.
The administrator told inspectors the facility stopped requiring background checks before 2014. He could not show a policy that said so. The Director of Staff Development said she wasn't there and doesn't know what happened. The result is that two employees hired in the 1990s, and one hired in 2021, reached August 2025 without documentation that anyone had ever screened them.
When the Director of Nurses was interviewed on August 13, she said checks had been immediately ordered. The inspection report does not say whether those checks had been completed, or what they found, by the time the report was finalized.
Ararat Nursing Facility is a long-term care facility in Mission Hills, in the northwestern San Fernando Valley. The residents there, like residents at any skilled nursing facility, rely on the people hired to care for them in ways that most people will never have to rely on a stranger. They rely on them to be present, to be attentive, and to have been vetted before they were ever given a key card or a medication cart or unsupervised access to a room.
The Director of Staff Development said it herself: staff need to be cleared from any abuse prior to start of work. She said it in the context of explaining why three of her staff had never been cleared.
The background checks, as of the inspection date, had just been ordered. For the registered nurse, that was 28 years after she was hired. For the certified nursing assistant, 27 years. The inspection report does not say what those checks will find. It does not say what they would have found in 1997 or 1998, had anyone thought to run them then.
What it says is that nobody did.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Ararat Nursing Facility from 2025-08-13 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 22, 2026 · Our methodology
Ararat Nursing Facility in MISSION HILLS, CA was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 13, 2025.
A licensed vocational nurse hired in June 2021 had no background check on file either.
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.