Alamitos West Health & Rehab: Infection Control Failures - CA
Another glove was on the sink. Neither had been thrown away.
The facility's own account manager was standing there during the inspection. He acknowledged the gloves should have been disposed of properly. There was no dispute about what was found or what should have happened. The gloves were simply still there, in a room where residents are bathed.
Twenty-seven minutes later, the inspector returned to the same shower room. This time, a white towel with grey and yellow-brownish stains was on the floor. It had not been placed in the dirty linen barrel. The account manager, again present, confirmed it should have been.
The findings were documented in a complaint inspection completed August 22, 2025, at Alamitos West Health & Rehabilitation, a skilled nursing facility at 3902 Katella Avenue in Los Alamitos. The deficiency was cited under the federal infection prevention and control standard, which requires facilities to implement practices designed to prevent the development and transmission of infections.
The level of harm was classified as potential for minimal harm. But the context matters: this is a nursing home, where residents are elderly, often immunocompromised, and dependent on staff to maintain the sanitary conditions they cannot enforce themselves.
Used gloves are, by definition, contaminated. They exist to keep whatever a caregiver touched away from the next surface, the next person. Left on a toilet tank or a sink in a shared shower room, they become the thing they were meant to prevent, a potential bridge for whatever microorganism they were shielding against.
A soiled towel on the floor carries the same logic. Whatever was on that towel, the grey stain, the yellow-brownish stain, was now in contact with the floor of a room where residents are brought to bathe.
The facility had revised its infection prevention and control policy just four months earlier, in April 2025. That policy stated that personnel would handle, store, process, and transport linens to prevent the spread of infection, and that effective methods would be used for the safe disposal of garbage and infectious waste. The glove on the toilet tank and the towel on the shower floor were found under that policy, not before it.
The Director of Nursing was interviewed six days after the initial observations, on August 20. She was informed of the findings. She said the process for cleaning shower rooms would include ensuring they were free of used gloves and washcloths going forward.
That was the corrective response: a statement that the rooms would be checked.
There is nothing complicated about throwing away a used glove. There is nothing technically demanding about putting a soiled towel in a barrel designated for soiled towels. These are among the most basic tasks in any care environment, the floor-level habits that infection control is built on. When they are skipped, it is not a systems failure in any elaborate sense. Someone finished what they were doing and left without completing the job.
The inspection report notes that some residents were affected. It does not specify how many used the shower room between the time the gloves and towel were left there and the time the inspector arrived. It does not say whether any resident came into contact with either item.
What it says is that a used glove was on a toilet tank, and a stained towel was on the floor, and the person responsible for the room confirmed both should have been handled differently.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Alamitos West Health & Rehabilitation from 2025-08-22 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
ALAMITOS WEST HEALTH & REHABILITATION in LOS ALAMITOS, CA was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 22, 2025.
The facility's own account manager was standing there during the inspection.
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.