This week’s Ftag of the Week on the CMSCG Blog is F910 Resident Rooms. This is a short, self-explanatory regulation, but there are several conditions under which it has been cited that providers should be aware of. In prior posts (you can access them at the end of this post) reviewing the Ftags in the Physical Environment regulatory group, we looked at some of the requirements for resident bedrooms, including the need to assure full visual privacy and restrictions on the number of residents in one room.
F910 Resident Room is less specific than those Ftags and does not include any Interpretive Guidance for surveyors, so let’s take a look at what you need to know.
- Regulatory requirement – Resident rooms must be designed and equipped to provided adequate nursing care, and to provide comfort and privacy to residents.
- How it’s been cited – The majority of citations
under the regulation are related to rooms that were certified for resident beds
but instead were being used for office space or storage of some kind. The
rationale behind that kind of citation is that newly admitted residents could
potentially be placed at risk if they were put in rooms that were not properly
equipped with items such as beds or privacy curtains. Other deficient practices
identified under this Ftag include:
- Resident rooms contained bariatric-size beds and wheelchairs, making it difficult to move and have privacy
- Lack of privacy curtains in rooms
- Chipped/peeling paint that could land on the residents
If you are utilizing bariatric or some other type of oversized bed, it is recommended that you conduct a careful review of those rooms and look at how it looks from an “outsider” perspective. Test to ensure that the privacy curtain totally encloses the resident bed, assess how well your staff can move around the bed when the privacy curtain is pulled – is the space so tight that the curtain partially opens when the staff moves around the bed? Don’t forget to look at how you are ensuring privacy during care in a private room.
Overall, don’t forget that the residents in your facility consider it their home. You have a responsibility to make sure that your residents feel comfortable, have their privacy maintained and know that their needs are being addressed.
To view our other Ftag of the Week posts related to resident rooms, please see the following: