Kern River Transitional Care — Bakersfield, CA

This page sets out what the federal inspection record says about Kern River Transitional Care, a 140-bed nursing home at 5151 Knudsen Drive, Bakersfield, California. Every figure below is copied from data the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) publishes about nursing homes that take Medicare or Medicaid. We have not added our own judgment to it.

The record at a glance

Federal ID (CCN)	555912
Legal business name	Bakersfieldidence Opco LLC
Listed chain or group	Pacs Group
Address	5151 Knudsen Drive, Bakersfield, CA 93308
Phone listed with CMS	(661) 325-9900
Ownership type	For profit – Limited Liability company
Certified beds	140
Average residents per day	136.0
Certified since	April 16, 2019
Overall CMS rating	1 out of 5
Health inspection rating	1 out of 5
Staffing rating	2 out of 5
Quality measures rating	4 out of 5
Total nursing staff turnover	48.3%
Most recent standard inspection	April 24, 2025

CMS scores nursing homes from one to five stars. The health inspection rating is set relative to other nursing homes in the same state, so a one-star home is in the bottom fifth in California, not the bottom fifth nationally. Staffing and quality measure ratings are scored against national thresholds.

Federal penalties

CMS’s penalty file lists 1 federal penalty against this facility: 1 fine totalling $77,720. A denial of payment means CMS stopped paying the home for residents admitted after a set date until the problem was fixed.

Inspectors have cited this home 75 times since January 2024

None reached severity level G, the level CMS calls actual harm. 53 came from complaints rather than routine inspections. Every one of them is listed below, with its date and what the rule required.

Was somebody in your family at Kern River Transitional Care? Tell us what you saw. We will read the whole record for this home — including the parts not shown on this page — and tell you plainly what it says and what your options are. You can write to us here without anyone hearing you.

Inspection citations since January 2024

CMS records 75 health citations at this facility from inspections between January 5, 2024 and April 29, 2026.

Inspected	Tag	What the rule requires	Scope and severity	Status
Apr 29, 2026	F0656	Develop and implement a complete care plan that meets all the resident’s needs, with timetables and actions that can be measured. (complaint)	D — Isolated, Potential for more than minimal harm	Correction date May 28, 2026
Apr 29, 2026	F0580	Immediately tell the resident, the resident’s doctor, and a family member of situations (injury/decline/room, etc.) that affect the resident. (complaint)	D — Isolated, Potential for more than minimal harm	Correction date May 28, 2026
Jul 28, 2025	F0552	Ensure that residents are fully informed and understand their health status, care and treatments. (complaint)	D — Isolated, Potential for more than minimal harm	Correction date Aug 28, 2025
Jul 28, 2025	F0658	Ensure services provided by the nursing facility meet professional standards of quality. (complaint)	D — Isolated, Potential for more than minimal harm	Correction date Aug 28, 2025
Jul 28, 2025	F0690	Provide appropriate care for residents who are continent or incontinent of bowel/bladder, appropriate catheter care, and appropriate care to prevent urinary tract infections. (complaint)	D — Isolated, Potential for more than minimal harm	Correction date Aug 28, 2025
Jul 28, 2025	F0726	Ensure that nurses and nurse aides have the appropriate competencies to care for every resident in a way that maximizes each resident’s well being. (complaint)	D — Isolated, Potential for more than minimal harm	Correction date Aug 28, 2025

The wording in the third column is CMS’s own plain-language summary of the federal rule that was cited, not a description of what happened. This table shows the 6 most recent citations. The other 69 are in the CMS file linked below.

How to read scope and severity

Every citation gets a letter from A to L. The letter carries two things at once: how serious the problem was, and how many residents it reached.

Severity	Isolated	Pattern	Widespread
Immediate jeopardy to resident health or safety	J	K	L
Actual harm	G	H	I
No actual harm, potential for more than minimal harm	D	E	F
No actual harm, potential for minimal harm	A	B	C

“Immediate jeopardy” is CMS’s term for a situation that has caused, or is likely to cause, serious injury, harm, impairment or death. It requires the home to act at once.

What this page does not tell you

• A citation is an inspector’s finding against a federal rule. It is not a court judgment, and the facility may be disputing it. Citations marked “under dispute” above are in CMS’s formal review process.
• Citation counts partly reflect how often a home was inspected and how many complaints were filed about it. A home with more citations has not automatically given worse care than one with fewer.
• Bigger homes have more residents, more staff and more inspections, so they tend to accumulate more citations.
• None of this says anything about the care any one resident received. A home with a clean record can still fail somebody, and a home with a bad record can be caring for your mother well.
• This is a snapshot. CMS updates these files monthly, and the figures here are from the file dated August 1, 2026.

Where this comes from

• Ratings, ownership, beds and penalties: CMS Provider Information dataset (4pq5-n9py), file dated August 1, 2026.
• Citations: CMS Health Deficiencies dataset (r5ix-sfxw), file dated August 1, 2026, filtered to inspections on or after January 1, 2024.
• This facility on the government’s own site: Medicare Care Compare.
• Retrieved August 29, 2026. Our method is set out in Editorial policy and How we count.

For the facility

If anything on this page is wrong, out of date or missing context, we will correct it. Kern River Transitional Care and anyone acting for it can reach the watchdog team through our corrections and right of reply page. We publish the response alongside the record.