Wausau Manor: Wound Care Infection Failures Found - WI
The inspection was conducted on August 21, 2025, following a complaint. Inspectors observed the wound care firsthand.
At 11:22 in the morning, Registered Nurse 1 approached the overbed table in the resident's room and placed a sterile barrier on it without wiping the surface down first. She then cleaned the resident's left buttock wound, along with the surrounding bilateral buttock and sacral areas, with normal saline, patted the areas dry with gauze, and reached for a tongue blade to apply Periguard Ointment to the skin.
She wore gloves. She did not wear a gown.
She also did not change her gloves between cleaning the wound and applying the ointment, and she did not wash or sanitize her hands in between those two steps.
The resident, identified in the report only as R3, had an open wound. That detail matters because of what the facility's own infection preventionist said less than thirty minutes after the observation ended.
"According to the new guidance," the infection preventionist told inspectors at 11:50 that morning, "a wound that will take more than a few days to heal, that resident should be placed in Enhanced Barrier Precautions." R3 was not in Enhanced Barrier Precautions. The infection preventionist learned this from the inspector during that same conversation.
Enhanced Barrier Precautions, a protocol designed to reduce the spread of drug-resistant organisms in nursing homes, requires staff to wear gowns and gloves when performing wound care on residents who qualify. The infection preventionist was direct about what she expected from her nurses: clean the table, place a barrier, change gloves after wound cleaning, wash hands, apply a fresh pair of gloves before touching the wound again with any skin preparation product. "A tongue blade," she said, "should not be used to apply ointment to a resident."
When inspectors spoke with the nurse herself at 1:35 that afternoon, she explained that she hadn't worn a gown because she didn't believe R3 was in Enhanced Barrier Precautions. Then she acknowledged that R3 should have been. When asked about the tongue blade, she said that was what she had been told to use.
The Interim Director of Nursing, interviewed at 2:00 PM, was unambiguous about what should have happened at every step. The table should have been wiped with a sanitizing wipe before the barrier went down. Gloves should have been changed between cleaning and applying ointment. Hands should have been washed or sanitized in between. And the ointment itself should have been applied with a clean applicator, she said, specifically a Q-tip.
Not a tongue blade.
"It shouldn't," the Interim Director of Nursing said when asked whether a tongue blade was an acceptable tool for the job. "That could have sharp edges or splintering from the wood used and cut the wound more, and that is not what you want to do. You want to protect the skin that you are applying the ointment to."
She confirmed, when told that R3 had not been placed in Enhanced Barrier Precautions and that the nurse had worn only gloves, that a gown should also have been worn.
The inspection cited the facility under F0880, the federal tag covering infection prevention and control, with a harm level listed as minimal harm or potential for actual harm, affecting a few residents.
What the report leaves unresolved is how long R3 had been receiving wound care under these conditions before the inspector walked in on a Thursday morning in August and watched it happen.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Wausau Manor Health Services from 2025-08-21 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Additional Resources
Data source: Official federal inspection data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Editorial process: AI-synthesized regulatory data, reviewed for accuracy by our editorial team.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: July 2, 2026 · Our methodology
WAUSAU MANOR HEALTH SERVICES in WAUSAU, WI was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 21, 2025.
The inspection was conducted on August 21, 2025, following a complaint.
Health inspections identify deficiencies that facilities must correct. Violations range from minor documentation issues to serious safety concerns. Review the full report below for specific details and facility response.