Failure to Maintain Safe and Controlled Smoking Areas
Penalty
Summary
The facility failed to maintain a safe smoking environment in both the secured women's behavioral unit and the main entrance area. On the secured women's behavioral unit, surveyors observed numerous discarded cigarette butts lying all over the ground near the exit door to the smoking area and along the sidewalk leading away from the building; a CNA confirmed the presence of these cigarette butts. At the main entrance, which was identified as a non‑smoking area, surveyors observed a concrete pad and awning where residents, visitors, and staff entered the building, and noted numerous discarded cigarette butts scattered across the ground near the front door, throughout the landscaping rocks on both sides of the doors, and around a trash can with a plastic liner. There was no container for discarded cigarettes at this entrance. Multiple residents with documented smoking evaluations and intact cognition were observed smoking in the non‑smoking main entrance area. One resident, with diagnoses including essential primary HTN, antisocial personality, inhalant abuse, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, and psychosis, had been assessed as an independent smoker with no history of smoking safety concerns and reported that he smoked by the main entrance doors often. Another resident, with diagnoses including paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, essential primary HTN, anxiety disorder, and psychotic disorder with delusions, was also assessed as an independent smoker. A third resident, with cerebrovascular disease, hemiplegia and hemiparesis, hyperlipidemia, depression, anxiety disorder, and epilepsy, had been assessed as an unsafe smoker requiring staff supervision due to left‑sided paralysis. Despite these assessments, surveyors observed these residents smoking directly outside the main entrance in the non‑smoking area, and staff (a CNA and an LPN) verified both the residents’ smoking in this location and the large amount of discarded cigarette butts scattered on the ground and in the landscaping.
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