MDS Alert

Published on Wed Apr 08, 2020 PDF

Question: Our janitorial staff know to clean doorknobs and other high-touch surfaces in our facility. What else do we need to keep in mind?

Florida Subscriber

Answer: Make sure staff are cleaning high-touch surfaces frequently, says Lieutenant Commander Kara Jacobs Slifka, MD, MPH, a member of the U.S. Public Health Service and a medical officer from the COVID-19 Response Clinical Team.

But also focus on medical equipment that you may use on multiple residents, like blood pressure cuffs, Hoyer lifts, or “any kind of equipment that might be moved from resident to resident, or possibly in different locations within your facility,” she says.

If you’re monitoring residents’ temperatures and pulse oximetry, disinfect that equipment, too. “You know you don’t want to be actually potentially spreading something while doing that …. You don’t want this monitoring program to actually be more of a problem than it solves,” says Brendan Jackson, MD, MPH, CDR, medical epidemiologist from the COVID-19 response clinical team at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, in a Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity call focused on COVID-19 updates for long-term care facilities.