Most Common Citations Given by CCLD

Sep 6, 2021 | Industry

Taken from June 1st’s Tuesdays with Tom video, and June 15th’s video. Edited for length and clarity.

Community Care Licensing Division is beginning to send their inspectors more frequently, now with COVID-19 restrictions easing up. Are you wondering the most common citations given by CCLD are? Look no further!

Water Temperature

Licensing will take the temperature between the closest faucet to the water heater and the one furthest away to get the most accurate reading. Both readings must be between 105°F and 120°F.

Be sure that you know how to calibrate your thermometers. To learn how to do this, you can follow the link here. We see a lot of these types of citations because people don’t know how to calibrate the thermometers. The water temperature could actually be within the allotted range, but their thermometer could be reading wrong.

Bottom line: calibrate your thermometers!

Physician’s Reports

This citation is incredibly common for caregivers of residents with dementia. It’s very important to have an up-to-date physician’s report.

Once a year, the resident/client’s physician is supposed to fill out this report, and you need to have it on hand. The report cannot be older than 12 months.

A lot of times, the resident goes to the doctor more than once every 12 months, so just be sure you know when they are due for a new physician’s report.

First-Aid Cards and CPR

All staff must have current first-aid cards.

CPR certification is another story.

It’s kind of a weird regulation. According to Licensing, one person in the facility at all times has to have a CPR card. This does not mean that every employee has to have a card, but if an employee is there by themselves, they need to be the one to have it.

For more small facilities, they usually get everybody CPR certified. For larger ones, it depends. What’s clear is that at least one person must have a CPR card. Whether or not everyone needs one is up to each specific facility.

Out of Date Training

Keep your staff up to date with the latest regulations, especially COVID-19. There are also new requirements for both medication and dementia training. Be sure that they’ve had 1 hour of LGBT training.

By California law, they also must have completed their sexual harassment training.

OSHA Violations

These are by far the most common citations for maintenance and operations:

  • Slip hazards (water on the floor, rugs, etc.)
  • Broken windows
  • Light bulbs that don’t work

Outdoor Hazards

Be sure to check around outside for anything that’s a trip hazard, like tree branches coming down where somebody might walk into them. It’s also incredibly important to not have anything blocking a resident’s window. Say you have a deck, or something like it, outside. If it’s in front of the resident’s window, that’s considered blocking it.

Blocked Exits and Faulty Locks

Back in the ‘70s, every bedroom had a ginormous sliding glass door that was considered the fire exit. Now, the windows are considered fire exits. So if you’re blocking a window, that’s blocking a fire exit. A lot of the time, we see citations where there’s a wheelchair under the window, or even a bed is up against the wall under [a] window. That is considered blocking an exit.

Be sure your door locks are working because Licensing will check in on that.

Also, if you have stairwells, don’t have any boxes or anything like that within them.

Accessible Hazardous Items

Probably one of the things that you should be most concerned about is toxic substances being locked up and inaccessible to the residents. We see a lot of citations for improper door locks for where your medication is stored. Sometimes there’s a lock on your medication room or your medication cabinet, and it doesn’t work.

There are a lot of citations on items that should be inaccessible to clients being accessible. Those items are primarily poisonous or hazardous. Maybe you have chemicals in the yard for gardening (like pesticides), or even cleaning chemicals in the laundry room (like bleach). If a resident got into either of the above or anything like that, it could be incredibly dangerous. Even fatal.

These kinds of things shouldn’t be available for any of your residents or clients in general, but it’s especially important to not have these accessible to clients with dementia.

Make sure anything toxic is safely locked up, and put medications away properly.

Poisonous plants could also be considered hazardous items. Be sure you don’t have any poisonous plants on your property. If you do want to keep them there—hey, some poisonous plants are beautiful—definitely put a 5-foot fence around them. That way the residents don’t have access to them.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels

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