F0880

F

Failure to Follow Hand Hygiene and Laundry Infection Control Practices

Weiser, Idaho Survey Completed on 02-20-2026

Penalty

No penalty information released

Summary

The deficiency involves the facility’s failure to follow its own hand hygiene and infection control policies during housekeeping, medication administration, and laundry operations. The facility’s Hand Hygiene policy, revised 9/15/25, required staff to perform hand hygiene at critical moments, including immediately before and after touching a resident, after contact with objects and surfaces in the resident’s environment, and immediately after PPE removal. During observation on 02/17/26, the Maintenance Director cleaned a resident room by wiping surfaces, sweeping, cleaning the toilet, using an aerosol bottle, and mopping while wearing gloves. After completing these tasks, he removed his gloves, moved to the next room, applied new gloves, and began cleaning without performing hand hygiene between glove removal and donning new gloves. He later stated he normally performs hand hygiene before applying clean gloves and acknowledged he did not do so in this instance, which did not comply with the facility’s policy.

Additional deficiencies were identified in the laundry room and during medication administration. During a laundry room inspection on 02/20/26, the Maintenance Director explained that dirty laundry is sorted on the dirty side, washed, then moved to the clean side for drying and folding, and confirmed that laundry staff do not use PPE while sorting dirty laundry. The Maintenance Director and the Administrator both acknowledged there is a high risk for cross-contamination when staff handle dirty laundry without PPE and then move to the clean side to fold clean clothing. On 02/18/26, an LPN was observed repeatedly preparing and administering medications to multiple residents without performing hand hygiene before preparing medications, before entering resident rooms, or after exiting resident rooms, despite touching items such as a medication cart key, a medication room doorknob, a pitcher, and nutritional supplement containers. The LPN later stated that hand hygiene should be performed before and after exiting resident rooms and before preparing medications, and the Infection Preventionist similarly stated that hand hygiene should be performed before entering and after exiting resident rooms and before preparing medications. These observations showed that the facility failed to ensure infection control practices were followed for hand hygiene and PPE use, affecting all residents receiving medications and laundry services and creating the potential for adverse outcomes related to cross-contamination.