Evercare of Swansea: Food Safety Failures Found - IL
R12 was cognitively intact, according to her own assessment records. She knew what was in there. She just couldn't do anything about it.
Inspectors from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services visited the 56-resident facility on August 20, 2025, responding to a complaint. What they found in the kitchen and in R12's room painted a consistent picture of food storage that nobody was keeping track of.
The kitchen inspection started at 8:53 in the morning. In the freezer unit near the kitchen entrance, a large package of uncooked beef patties sat directly above a box of popsicles. Raw meat stored above ready-to-eat food is a basic cross-contamination risk, the kind taught in the first week of any food safety course.
Two minutes later, in the standing refrigerator on the adjacent wall, inspectors found a plastic tub of sour cream with a manufacturer's best-by date of July 2, seven weeks earlier. Next to it, a clear container of hamburger patties with no label and no date at all. Then a container of banana pudding, prepared August 12, with no discard date written on it. A container of chocolate pudding, prepared August 11, same problem. A container labeled tuna, prepared August 13, no discard date either.
The dietary manager, identified as V19, told the inspector that someone had simply not written the discard dates on the labels.
The facility's own food storage policy, dated August 1, 2025, states that prepared foods stored in the refrigerator will be covered, labeled, and dated with an expiration date. If no expiration date exists on the package, staff must write a use-by date on the product. The policy had been in place for nineteen days when inspectors arrived and found multiple containers with no discard dates.
The administrator, identified as V1, told inspectors on August 22 that she expects dietary staff to follow food service policies. She did not say what she does when they don't.
Back in R12's room, the full inventory was worse than it first appeared. The milk carton carried a use-by date of July 8, six weeks before the inspection. The two protein shakes had use-by dates of March 5, 2024, and July 4, 2024, meaning one had been expired for seventeen months and the other for thirteen. The Styrofoam container with the meal ticket dated June 30 had been sitting in the refrigerator for at least seven weeks.
Inspectors cited the facility for failing to store food in a manner that prevents foodborne illness, a violation they assessed at the level of minimal harm or potential for actual harm, with the potential to affect all 56 residents.
The gap between the facility's written policy and what inspectors actually found in the refrigerators is not subtle. The policy was current. The sour cream was not. The policy required discard dates. The tuna container had none. The policy covered resident refrigerators too, implicitly, given that staff were responsible for maintaining them. R12 had told the facility directly, in her own words, that her refrigerator wasn't being cleaned. She was alert enough to notice. Nobody had acted on it.
A protein shake expired in March of 2024 does not end up in a resident's refrigerator in August of 2025 because of a single oversight. It stays there because nobody looked.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Evercare of Swansea from 2025-08-27 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
EVERCARE OF SWANSEA in SWANSEA, IL was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 27, 2025.
R12 was cognitively intact, according to her own assessment records.
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.