Improper Storage and Handling of Resident Medications
Penalty
Summary
The deficiency involves the facility’s failure to ensure safe storage and proper handling of medications for two residents. For one resident with a lower leg fracture and diabetes, who had a BIMS score of 15 indicating good decision-making ability, medications brought from home were found stored in stapled store pharmacy paper bags on the top right-hand side of a locked cabinet in the medication room. The facility’s policy titled “Medications Brought to the Facility by the Resident/Family” stated that the facility ordinarily does not permit residents and families to bring medications into the facility. During observation and interview, LN 3 confirmed that the bags contained this resident’s medications, acknowledged that the facility did not usually store outside medications in store pharmacy bags or inside a cabinet in the medication room, and did not know how they came to be stored there. The DON later stated that when family brings in medications from home, the facility asks them to take the medications back home and that these medications should not have been stored in the medication room cabinet. The second deficiency involved another resident with depression and high blood pressure, who had a BIMS score of 13 indicating good decision-making ability. During observation of medication cart 1 with LN 2, a medication cup containing pills was found loose in the top right-hand drawer of the cart. LN 2 stated that the medications were for this resident, who had refused to take them earlier in the day. The facility’s “Storage of Medications” policy indicated that drugs and biologicals are to be stored in the packaging, containers, or other dispensing systems in which they are received. In a subsequent interview, the DON stated that no medications should be kept in a medication cup inside the medication cart and that when a resident will not take medications, the medications should be disposed of.
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