Yakima Valley School: Sedation Lapse Left Resident Bleeding - WA
That happened on July 29, 2025. The resident's family representative did not receive a call until Resident 1 was already in the ambulance.
Staff heard a loud thud in the back hall at 1:14 PM. When they reached the resident, she was standing near her bedroom door, blood running from her forehead. Pressure was applied. An ambulance was called. The wound required staples.
The family representative, reached by phone on August 18, described the injury as "horrific" and said they were devastated it had happened. After the resident returned home, the representative took her back to the hospital to have the staples removed. Hospital staff instructed them to clean the wound two to three times a day. It would take a while to heal, they were told.
It did not go smoothly. The resident was resistant to having the wound cleaned. Every cleaning had become a fight.
The worker who left Resident 1 alone, identified in the inspection report as Staff D, acknowledged during an interview on August 18 that they knew the resident was on what the facility calls Level of Sight 3, a sedation monitoring protocol. Staff D said they believed it was acceptable to step away once the resident fell asleep. Staff D said they did not know that LOS 3 required continuous line of sight until a nurse formally released the resident from monitoring. "They should not have left Resident 1 alone in their room," Staff D said, including themselves in the acknowledgment.
The facility's own investigation, completed July 31, confirmed Staff D had failed to follow the sedation protocol.
A second worker, Staff C, was the one who responded after the thud and found the resident bleeding. Staff C was new to the day shift. According to Staff A, the facility's Superintendent and Nursing Home Administrator, Staff C had not been trained on the sedation protocol at all. "We should have done a better job to protect her," Staff A said during an interview on August 20.
That admission carried particular weight because this was not the first time federal inspectors cited Yakima Valley School for this exact problem. The August 20 inspection report identifies the violation as a repeat citation, referencing a prior Statement of Deficiencies dated May 28, 2025, less than three months earlier. The facility had already been told, in writing, that its sedation monitoring practices were deficient. A worker still left a sedated resident alone. Another worker arrived on a shift without knowing the protocols existed.
The violation is cited under Washington Administrative Code 388-97-1060(3)(g) and was classified as causing actual harm to the resident.
The family representative, who learned what happened only after Resident 1 was en route to the hospital, now takes the resident to wound care appointments and cleans a staple wound from a fall that the facility's own investigation says should not have happened. The resident resists. The cleaning hurts. The representative does it anyway, two to three times a day, for a wound that will take a while to heal.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Yakima Valley School from 2025-08-20 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
YAKIMA VALLEY SCHOOL in SELAH, WA was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 20, 2025.
That happened on July 29, 2025.
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.