Last updated on June 15th, 2023
Last month, we wrote a blog post detailing everything that food inspectors are looking for when they come to inspect the kitchens at your senior living community. The inspector is responsible for making sure that your team is complying with the 15 Food and Nutrition F-tags that are used by your state and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to regulate safe, quality care.
In part two of our Food Safety 101 series, we’ll tell you the best practices your food service team should be following to ensure you’re always compliant with F-tags and prepared for an inspection.
F-812
Let’s start with tag F812 which relates to food procurement, storage, preparation, and serving requirements. F-812 is one of the most commonly tagged Food & Nutrition Services related CMS survey tags. One of the most comprehensive Food & Nutrition Services tags, F-812 covers a variety of food safety regulations. F-812 is the most likely tag to be cited in the initial kitchen walk-through and has the potential to trigger a surveyor to dig deeper into the dietary department during a routine survey. Although it’s all basic food safety and kitchen sanitation, it’s one of the first things to slip in foodservice operations.
Best Practices for Food Procurement
When evaluating this guideline, your surveyor is confirming that your community’s food is procured per local regulations. Here are the best practices we recommend for staying compliant:
- When food arrives at your facility, your team should inspect it to ensure it meets federal, state, and/or local standards. Be sure to check the temperature of sensitive items to ensure they’re safe.
- Before putting food away, label and date all items to ensure their use-by date is prominent for all to see. All items must have an intake date.
- If your community has a garden that supplies food to the kitchen, do regular checks to ensure the garden meets state and local policies and procedures.
- Maintain a log of all purchases for at least 6 months.
Best Practices for Food Storage
Guidelines surrounding food storage are there to keep your residents safe from foodborne illnesses. To stay compliant with these tags, your team should perform the following:
In your storeroom:
- Keep all items covered/sealed from room air.
- Make sure all items are labeled and dated.
- Keep cleaning supplies away from all food supplies.
- Prevent rodents and insects with a managed pest prevention program and by elevating all food off of the ground.
- Rotate stock following a “First-In, First-Out” (FIFO) pattern. Simply put, move older foods in front so that you use them first.
In your refrigerator and freezer:
- Separate raw foods (like beef, fish, lamb, pork, and poultry) from each other, and store raw meats on shelves below fruits, vegetables, or other ready-to-eat foods so that meat juices don’t drip onto these foods.
- Regularly clean all shelves, racks, walls, floors, ceilings, and doors.
- Do temperature checks and document them in your temp logs every day. Make sure the refrigerator thermometer is visible and below 41 degrees. For the freezer, the temperature needs to be 0 degrees or below because frozen food must be kept at a temperature that keeps them frozen solid.
- Make sure all items are labeled and dated.
- Rotate foods regularly and ensure that prepared foods are discarded after three days.
- Keep all items covered/sealed from room air.
- Keep all food items off the floor of walk-in units.
- Store foods in appropriate containers that ensure safe holding temperatures are reached and easily maintained
Best Practices for Food Preparation
Safe food preparation techniques prevent cross-contamination and keep your vulnerable residents safe from foodborne illnesses. Here are a few best practices for complying with the food preparation safety guidelines:
- Make sure everyone on your team knows the appropriate temperature to cook various foods. You can review those temperatures in our previous blog about food safety.
- Require proper handwashing, hairnets, and the use of disposable gloves.
- Your staff should be washing their hands properly with soap between handling raw meat and other foods to prevent cross-contamination.
- Staff should also be washing hands before serving food to residents and after collecting soiled plates and food waste.
- Train staff to avoid touching their faces, hair, noses, etc while preparing and handling food.
- When it comes to reheating food that has cooked and cooled, your team should reheat the dish so all parts of the food reach an internal temperature of 165°F for at least 15 seconds before holding for hot service.
- For ready-to-eat foods that require heating before eating, take them directly out of a sealed container or an intact package from an approved food processing source and heat it to at least 135°F for holding for hot service.
- Invest in covers for your dishes and get in the habit of making sure food is covered during transportation and distribution to residents
- Don’t forget about ice! All ice needs to be made from potable water, and if you use ice to cool certain food items, that ice can’t be consumed by residents. Also make sure your ice machine is cleaned and serviced regularly.
Will You Pass Your Next Inspection?
While it sounds like a lot to keep track of, if you train your team on these best practices from the start, you’ll never have to worry about failing an inspection. Maintaining compliance with F-812 requires constant assessment – it’s not enough to check periodically.
As we mentioned in our last food safety blog post, we take safety very seriously at Culinary Services Group. To serve great meals to your residents, we need to make sure your kitchens are up to par and can pass the state health inspections. We train all of our managers on their individual state regulations so they are clear on what it takes to have a zero-deficiency inspection.
Plus, we offer food safety and proper food handling classes that go well beyond industry requirements.
We’re so serious about food safety that if you sign a contract with us and receive a moderate to serious violation that requires another inspection, we’ll forgo our management fees until the problem is resolved and your facility passes inspection.
That’s a pretty unique proposition, but we’re a pretty unique food service management company. We have consistently performed better than the national average on health inspections for the last five years.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help keep your community’s kitchen safe and clean, contact us here.
