Failure to Identify Significant IV Antibiotic Omission and Initiate Timely QAPI PIP
Penalty
Summary
The deficiency involves the facility’s failure to timely identify and address a significant medication error involving omitted doses of IV antibiotics for Resident #1 and to initiate a Process Improvement Project (PIP) through its QAPI program. Facility policies on adverse consequences and medication errors, administering medications, medication regimen review (MRR), and QAPI require that medication errors, including omissions, be promptly identified, reported, analyzed by the QAPI committee, and used to drive process improvements. Despite these policies, the facility did not recognize and elevate a serious omission of ordered IV Ampicillin as a quality deficiency in a timely manner. Resident #1 was admitted with diagnoses including UTI, urinary retention, and Enterococcus faecalis bacteremia, and had an order for Ampicillin IV 2 g every 4 hours with a stop date of 1/13/2026 per infectious disease orders. On admission, the Admissions Nurse entered the stop date incorrectly as 12/13/2025 instead of 1/13/2026. The RN Charge Nurse, responsible for confirming the order, failed to identify that the stop date entered into the computer system did not match the written physician order. LPN A, who performed the 24-hour chart check, also failed to detect the incorrect stop date, even though the procedure required verifying that the written physician’s order matched what was entered into the electronic system. The pharmacy provider entered the correct stop date of 1/13/2026 in its system and continued sending Ampicillin to the facility, resulting in an accumulation of the medication in the medication room. The error was not identified until RN A noticed an abundance of Ampicillin on 12/24/2025 and performed a chart check, revealing that the medication had been stopped 11 days earlier than ordered. This led to 59 missed doses of IV Ampicillin for Resident #1. Interviews with the ADON, Interim Administrator, and DON confirmed that the facility’s medication verification processes were not followed, that the error was considered significant, and that no ad hoc QAPI meeting or PIP had been initiated prior to the next scheduled QAPI meeting, despite the facility’s policies requiring QAPI involvement in reviewing medication errors and implementing process improvements.
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