Failure to Maintain Dignity and Cleanliness of a Resident’s Wheelchair
Penalty
Summary
The deficiency involves the facility’s failure to maintain a resident’s dignity and to follow its own policy for cleaning and disinfecting reusable resident care equipment, specifically a wheelchair. The facility’s Resident Rights policy requires care that maintains dignity, and the Cleaning and Disinfection of Resident Care Equipment policy requires reusable equipment, including wheelchairs, to be cleaned and disinfected after use by one resident and before use by another. The resident involved, identified as cognitively intact with a BIMS score of 15 and documented wheelchair use on the MDS, was repeatedly observed with a cotton pad cloth in the wheelchair seat that had brown fecal matter smeared on it. Surveyors observed on multiple days that the resident’s wheelchair contained a cotton pad cloth with brown fecal matter smeared on it, including while the resident was sitting in the wheelchair. On one occasion, after the resident stood up, the soiled cotton pad cloth was visible underneath. The resident reported that there was always brown fecal matter in the wheelchair and that when she asked staff to change the pad cloth, she was often told they had run out of pad cloths. A CNA confirmed the presence of brown fecal matter on the wheelchair, and the Assistant DON stated that staff should always change the resident’s cotton pad cloth and that the resident should not have to sit in a dirty wheelchair with fecal matter in it.
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