Although survey citation rules can vary from state to state, nursing home operators can implement broad steps to avoid deficiencies if they focus on the often overlooked easy fixes as well as the more complicated overlaps between disparate areas of care – ranging from food safety and mental health documentation to infection control.
Certain trends persist across the board, and to successfully issue a plan of correction for a survey deficiency, operators may need to take a multidisciplinary approach, according to Amy Greer and Alicia Cantinieri of Zimmet Healthcare Services Group (ZHSG).
Simple solutions in infection control, which remains a significant concern even in the post-Covid era, involve keeping in place stringent infection prevention protocols. Meanwhile, another relatively undemanding area to keep up with is food safety and procurement, but it often gets overlooked.
