DULUTH, Ga. — After a senior living facility in Duluth received a poor score on its food inspection report, it's making some changes. Last week, the health department re-inspected the Parc at Duluth and it received a passing score.
The senior living facility previously received a 25/100 on its report following a routine inspection on September 21. A woman, who didn't want to be identified, said her mother lives at the Parc at Duluth and claimed issues have been happening for a long time.
The woman shared a letter from the facility's management, sent on August 1 to residents, which addressed multiple issues, including the dining services.
"The community's Dining Services program is not operating up to Parc Communities' standards. This is unacceptable, and we apologize for the level of service you have experienced," the letter from management stated.
Shirley Meyer, who's lived at the facility for more than a year, said she was shocked by the poor score. Meyer said she depends on the facility to take care of her since her family doesn't live in Georgia. She added there were a lot of complaints about the food and added it was difficult to access management.
"The food was inconsistent. Some days it would be good, other days it was really pretty bad," Meyer said. "And so we let them know. And finally, they listened. Upper management took over, and it's much better."
11Alive also spoke with Woody DeWeese, the Executive Vice President of Parc Communities. DeWeese said the Sept. 21 inspection came during leadership changes.
"It kind of cascaded from there, but we responded immediately. Our team has been dining here. Our general manager is in the dining room right now having lunch with our residents," DeWeese said.
In a statement last week, DeWeese said management was both "surprised and disappointed" by the 25/100 score.
"The surprise was the score itself and the number of issues identified in the inspection," DeWeese said.
In the re-inspection that the Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale County Health Departments did on Friday, the facility received a passing score of 81/100, which is a B.
GNR Public Health gave some insight into the new score and provided the following statement:
81 is a passing inspection score. On this re-inspection, they had three violations and because these were repeat violations, additional points were taken off. There were some food items that were not held at appropriate food temperature, and these foods were discarded (corrected on site). Another violation centered around the labeling of cleaning supplies. This was corrected on site also. The last violation was related to a water leak in the freezer which had not been corrected from the previous inspection, and the facility has until October 10 to correct this.
DeWeese said on Tuesday the issue with the freezer has already been fixed.
"As you can tell by the score, a lot of the items have that were corrected, remained corrected. And so there were some small things that were identified that, again, we were able to do some education onsite during that inspection and one item that we had to follow up with, which has since been completed," DeWeese said. "But we took this opportunity to stop and spend a lot more time refreshing training with our staff, particularly in the kitchen and dining room."
GNR Public Health added there will be more frequent inspections over the next year:
A re-inspection will occur around October 10 to verify correction of the freezer leak. Because of the original low score of 25, more frequent inspections will be conducted over the next 12 months. The facility has made significant improvements since the September 21 inspection, and we will continue to work with them to ensure safe food practices remain.
This shows the importance and value of our environmental health inspection team in ensuring that the food provided to our community is prepared and handled in a safe manner. Food safety is regulated, but our focus is also on education and the development of relationships with facility owners and managers which is why our teams work with facilities like this one to help rectify any deficiencies. We encourage facilities to reach out to us for any questions they may have or any opportunities for us to provide education about food safety.