Failure to Maintain Required Temperatures and Sanitary Wheelchairs
Penalty
Summary
The deficiency involves the facility’s failure to maintain required ambient air temperatures and to ensure accurate monitoring and reporting of those temperatures. During an observation period, multiple resident rooms and common areas on D and E pods were found to have temperatures below the facility’s stated acceptable range of 71°F to 81°F, with readings between 67.6°F and 70.3°F obtained using the facility’s laser thermometer. The Director of Maintenance confirmed these readings and acknowledged that the facility’s policy called for temperatures in common resident areas to be kept between 71°F and 81°F, with any resident preference outside that range requiring an assessment. Review of temperature logs for several days showed all sampled temperatures documented uniformly as 75°F with no variation, and there were no open work orders or prior reports for the rooms where low temperatures were observed. The Maintenance Assistant reported he had been recording temperatures with the same thermometer for two months and denied recent concerns about temperatures being out of range. The deficiency also includes failure to maintain wheelchairs in a clean and sanitary condition. During observation on D pod, a resident was seen seated in a wheelchair near the nurses’ station that was covered in debris of different colors and was noticeably dirty. The Therapy Program Director confirmed the condition of the wheelchair and stated it had been scheduled to be cleaned on a specific night shift but it did not appear that this had been completed. The Unit Manager/LPN reported that nurses and unit managers were responsible for overseeing the wheelchair cleaning schedule carried out by CNAs and that staff were to be disciplined if cleaning was not done, but also verified that the facility did not have a policy specific to wheelchair cleaning. A wheelchair cleaning schedule for D pod showed that this resident’s wheelchair was to be cleaned twice weekly, on Mondays and Fridays.
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