Improper Food Storage, Sanitation, and Hand Hygiene in Dietary Services
Penalty
Summary
The deficiency involves failure to properly label, seal, and store food items and to maintain clean food service areas in the main kitchen and satellite kitchenettes. During an initial tour of the main kitchen, surveyors observed multiple opened, undated, and unsealed dry goods in the dry storage area, including cream of wheat, macaroni noodles, rainbow sprinkles, and hamburger buns. In the walk-in refrigerator and kitchen serving area refrigerator, there were opened, undated, and unsealed items such as shredded cheese, fish, sliced cheese, an onion, lettuce, and chicken base. The kitchen freezer contained several opened, undated, and unsealed bags and boxes of frozen foods, including chicken strips, potato wedges, beef patties, chicken nuggets, and corn dogs, with some corn dogs showing frost buildup. The ice machine in the kitchen was not working and had visible rust at the hinges. In the dining kitchenette areas, surveyors observed trash present, clean towels stored directly on the floor of a cabinet, and multiple food and beverage items that were open, unlabeled, undated, or stored in dirty refrigerators. These included an open water bottle, an open bottle of soda, and undated food containers such as a green dessert and rice casserole, some with utensils left inside the food. The juice machines and ice/water dispensers in different dining areas had visible calcium buildup, juice splatter on surrounding surfaces, rust on drip racks, and black particles floating in ice. Cabinets, drawers, and areas under sinks and around trash compartments contained food crumbs, coffee grounds, dried spills, discoloration from leaks, peeling laminate with exposed wood, and black debris of unknown substance. On subsequent days, these areas remained visibly soiled and largely unchanged from prior observations, with additional trash noted. Surveyors also observed improper hand hygiene and glove use by dietary staff during food plating and service. A dietary aide in a kitchenette plated food while wearing the same pair of gloves to handle utensils, meal tickets, and bread, then removed gloves without performing hand hygiene, donned new gloves, and continued handling food and clean plates without washing hands. Another dietary staff member handled covered food containers, set them up on the steam table, removed gloves without hand hygiene, made a phone call, then resumed uncovering food and placing serving utensils without washing hands or wearing gloves, and later donned clean gloves and began serving food without prior hand hygiene. Additionally, a resident’s meal tray with oatmeal, eggs, bacon, and toast remained on a service table for an extended period, and when temperatures were checked, all items were below appropriate hot-holding temperatures before the tray was discarded. Staff interviews confirmed that dietary aides were responsible for cleaning kitchenettes and dining service stations and that there was no one assigned to clean on weekends, contributing to the observed unclean conditions, despite a facility policy requiring clean food storage areas and proper labeling and dating of stored foods.
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