Now that I am more involved with the admission process than ever.. I have noted that we seem to have a very high rate of residents coming to use with VRE and MRSA. Seems our local hospital is doing nares cultures and rectal cultures as a standard procedure w/ treatment for everyone. This is presenting a real challenge with bed availability as we just don't have enough private rooms (in our facility and in the surrounding LTC's either). I'm also not completely sure we are up to standard on our current infection control procedures. So, some questions for all of you.. PLEASE RELATE TO LONG TERM CARE practice only as I know the hospital does things much differently.
1. Are you all still routinely giving private rooms to multi-drug resist residents, cohorting residents, or are you even diligently paying attention to this?
2. Do you follow contact precautions, ie: signs on doors, bins in room, mask/gown as needed? I personally think this is over the top sometimes, (I have always been one to preach garbage is garbage..dirty laundry is dirty laundry), BUT on the other hand I see far to many CNA's leaving rooms with arms loaded with dirty linen/not bagged and hugged next to their uniform. Maybe if we had the bins, etc at least they wouldn't carry the yucky stuff all thru the hall on the shirts?
3. Are your local hospitals routinely screening everyone they send? Doing anything different because of it.
Thanks, I know wediscussed this in part recently, but I couldn't find it when I searched.