Reporting an adverse incident
Unfortunately, there are profoundly serious incidents and accidents that will occur in your community no matter the precautions you take to avoid it. It could be as simple as a resident taking a fall while being involved in your activity programming all the way to an attack on a resident by a staff member or another resident. The Ohio Department of Health mandates reporting any incident that affects the health, safety and wellbeing of a resident- check out the regulation below for how to handle these situations:
Rule 3701-16-12 | Changes in residents’ health status; incidents;
(A) In the event of a significant adverse change in residents’ health status, the residential care facility shall do all of the following:
(1) Take immediate and proper steps to see that the resident receives necessary intervention including, if needed, medical attention or transfer to an appropriate medical facility;
(2) Make a notation of the change in health status and any intervention taken in the resident’s record;
(3) Provide pertinent resident information to the person providing the intervention as soon as possible; and
(4) Notify the sponsor unless the resident refuses or requests otherwise.
(B) As used in this paragraph, “incident” means any accident or episode involving a resident, staff member, or other individual in a residential care facility which presents a risk to the health, safety, or well-being of a resident. In the event of an incident, the facility shall do both of the following:
(1) Take immediate and proper steps to see that the resident or residents involved receive necessary intervention including, if needed, medical attention or transfer to an appropriate medical facility; and
(2) Investigate the incident and document the incident and the investigation. The facility shall maintain an incident log separate from the resident record which shall be accessible to the director and shall contain the time, place, and date of the occurrence; a general description of the incident; and the care provided or action taken. The facility shall maintain a notation about the incident in the resident’s record.
Pro Tip:
The ODH takes these matters very seriously. You do not want to be in a situation where you did not file an incident report and have a surveyor come in to investigate this incident based upon a complain call. Be proactive, do not hide anything and use these incident reports to continuously improve your practices.