A Home by Any Other Name: Building an Understanding of Infection Prevention in Small Residential Care Facilities

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, resident advocates, including Kohn (2021) and Waters (2021), recommended increasing the availability of home- and community-based settings and smaller-sized facilities to decrease the risks of COVID-19 and other infections among older adults residing in long-term care facilities (LTCFs). While infection prevention and control (IPC) challenges and approaches in assisted living (AL) and small nursing homes (NHs) have been described, there has been less focus on small care settings in the community (Bucy et al., 2020; Zimmerman et al., 2016). This article discusses IPC issues in LTCFs with eight or fewer residents. To ensure clarity, the term “small residential care facilities” (SRCFs) is used throughout this paper to refer to these settings, which are licensed under different names at the state level. A search of state public health and LTCF licensing webpages across the United States found that facilities meeting this definition of SRCFs were licensed in at least 24 states as of March 1, 2021.