Failure to Properly Dispose of Expired Food and Maintain Safe Food Storage Conditions
Penalty
Summary
Facility staff failed to ensure proper disposal of expired and spoiled food items and did not store food in accordance with professional standards for food service safety. During a kitchen tour, multiple yogurt containers with best by dates that had already passed were found in the walk-in cooler. The Dietary Manager acknowledged that these yogurts needed to be discarded. On a subsequent kitchen tour, an open case of tomatoes was found in the walk-in cooler, with several tomatoes displaying white fuzzy material around the stems, indicating spoilage. The Dietary Manager confirmed the tomatoes were bad and removed them for disposal. Additionally, in the nourishment room, there were two vinyl floor tiles placed in front of a leaking ice machine, with a puddle of water and black specks resembling mold on the wall and floor base molding. No caution signs were present to indicate the wet floor. The under-counter cabinets in the nourishment room were observed to be dirty, containing a butcher knife, water spill marks, a red solo cup, a plastic plate cover lid, and a zip lock bag with sweetener packets. The freezer section of the nourishment refrigerator had at least a one-inch ice build-up on all walls. These observations were confirmed with the Nursing Home Administrator during the survey.