Nursing Home Supply Checklist

A nursing home — more precisely, a skilled nursing facility (SNF) — is a fundamentally higher-acuity setting than assisted living, and its supply list has to reflect that gap rather than treat the two as the same category with a bigger budget. Assisted living residents get help with daily activities from largely unlicensed direct-care staff; nursing home residents receive genuinely clinical nursing care, around the clock, from licensed nurses working under CMS Requirements of Participation (42 CFR Part 483). That distinction shows up everywhere in the stocking list: pressure-injury prevention and staging, indwelling and intermittent catheter care, and real wound management sit inside a nursing home’s normal scope of practice in a way they explicitly do not for assisted living. This checklist is scoped to that higher-acuity reality, organized the way nursing and treatment-cart staff actually use it.

Where to source this: LAC (lac.us), CASRAI’s sister medical-supply business, stocks the core categories below directly — Incontinence supplies, Dressings, and Catheters, Urology & Incontinence products. Nothing here is a paid placement or a third-party affiliate link; it’s a real, first-party sourcing option under the same operator as CASRAI.

Skilled Nursing vs. Assisted Living: Where the Acuity Actually Diverges

The single most consequential fact for procurement is who is legally allowed to do what. A skilled nursing facility is federally regulated under CMS Requirements of Participation, staffed with licensed nurses (RNs and LPNs/LVNs) around the clock and a medical director, and surveyed against specific clinical-care standards — infection prevention and control under 42 CFR 483.80, for example, is the regulation behind the F880 survey tag. Assisted living, by contrast, is licensed at the state level, generally staffed by certified nursing assistants and unlicensed personal-care aides, and is built around activities-of-daily-living support and supervision, not clinical treatment. CASRAI’s assisted living facility supply checklist covers that lower-acuity list in full — hygiene, mobility support, basic first aid, fall response — and is worth reading alongside this one specifically to see where the line sits, because the two lists genuinely diverge rather than just scale up. A nursing home that under-stocks clinical wound-care and catheter supplies because it’s reusing an assisted-living-style list is carrying real clinical risk, not just a procurement gap.

Concretely, licensed nursing staff in a skilled nursing facility can do things ALF direct-care staff generally cannot: administer injections and IV medications, manage complex and non-healing wounds, insert and manage indwelling catheters, and make independent clinical judgments about a resident’s condition. The supply list below assumes that scope of practice is actually present on staff — stock accordingly, not aspirationally.

Pressure Injury Prevention and Staging Supplies

Pressure injury prevention is one of the defining clinical responsibilities of skilled nursing, and it’s a heavily surveyed area precisely because it’s largely preventable with the right combination of equipment, turning schedule, and skin assessment. The National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel (NPIAP) staging framework — Stage 1 through Stage 4, plus unstageable and deep tissue pressure injury — is the common clinical language nursing staff use to document what they find, and the supply list should map to every stage a facility might actually encounter, not just the mild end.

Pressure-redistributing support surfaces — foam, gel, low-air-loss, and alternating-pressure mattresses and overlays, matched to individual resident risk level (commonly assessed with a validated tool like the Braden Scale) rather than applied uniformly across the census.
Positioning wedges and heel-protector boots — heels are one of the highest-incidence pressure-injury sites precisely because they’re easy to overlook during routine turning.
Barrier creams and moisture-management products — protecting skin from incontinence-associated dermatitis, which compounds pressure-injury risk when the two occur together, as they frequently do in this population.
Advanced wound dressings staged to injury severity — transparent films and hydrocolloids for early-stage or at-risk intact skin, foam and alginate dressings for exuding open wounds, and specialty dressings for deeper or infected injuries — stocked across the range rather than a single generic dressing type.
Turning and repositioning aids — slide sheets and turning devices that reduce shear and friction during repositioning, and reduce staff injury risk during the process.

For the dressing selection and irrigation side of this specifically, CASRAI’s wound and surgical irrigation supplies selection guide and wound care supply wholesale buying guide go deeper into product selection and bulk-purchasing economics than the summary above.

Catheter Care and Urology Supplies

Catheter management is squarely inside skilled nursing’s clinical scope and squarely outside assisted living’s — this is one of the clearest single markers of the acuity gap between the two settings. Indwelling (Foley) catheters, intermittent catheterization, and external/condom catheters all show up in a typical SNF resident population, and catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) prevention is one of the standard healthcare-associated infection measures nursing facilities are surveyed and tracked against.

Indwelling (Foley) catheters and closed drainage systems — sized appropriately, with the closed-system integrity maintained as the primary CAUTI-prevention control; every unnecessary break in the closed system is a documented infection-risk event.
Intermittent catheterization supplies — straight catheters and closed intermittent systems, for residents managed on a scheduled catheterization protocol rather than an indwelling device.
External (condom) catheters — a lower-infection-risk alternative for male residents where clinically appropriate, reducing reliance on indwelling devices.
Catheter care kits and antiseptic cleansing supplies — for routine periurethral care, a documented and scheduled task rather than an as-needed one.
Urinary drainage bags — bedside and leg-bag variants, stocked in the volume real daily changeover requires.

CASRAI’s drainage catheters institutional stocking guide covers sizing, material selection, and bulk-purchasing considerations for this category in more depth than fits here.

Wound Management Beyond Pressure Injuries

Skilled nursing facilities also manage surgical wounds from post-acute residents recovering from a hospital stay, diabetic and vascular ulcers, and skin tears — a broader wound-care scope than the pressure-injury category alone. The clinical judgment calls (débridement, infection assessment, when to escalate to a wound-care specialist or return to hospital) sit with licensed nursing and the facility’s medical director, but the supply side needs to support the full range of what that clinical team will actually be asked to manage:

Skin-tear and traumatic-wound dressings — sized and formulated for thin, fragile aging skin, which tears easily and is one of the most common minor-to-moderate injuries in this population.
Surgical dressing supplies for residents admitted post-surgery from a hospital, including sterile dressing-change kits.
Wound irrigation and cleansing solutions — sterile saline and antiseptic irrigation for wound-bed preparation ahead of dressing changes.
Compression therapy supplies for venous insufficiency and DVT-risk residents — CASRAI’s DVT prophylaxis and compression stockings grading guide covers the grading and selection criteria in detail.
Documentation and measurement supplies — disposable wound rulers and photography protocols to track healing progress against the care plan, which surveyors will expect to see.

Incontinence and Daily Hygiene Supplies

Incontinence support is high-volume in nursing homes just as it is in assisted living, but the acuity difference still matters here: nursing home residents are more likely to be fully dependent for toileting and repositioning, which changes both the product tier and the staffing pattern needed to deliver care safely.

Absorbent briefs, tiered by absorbency level — light through overnight/heavy, matched to individual assessed need rather than a single facility-wide default.
Underpads (chux), disposable and reusable, for bed and chair protection.
Perineal cleansing wipes and no-rinse cleansers formulated to limit skin breakdown from frequent cleansing — directly relevant to the pressure-injury and dermatitis risk covered above, not a separate concern.
No-rinse bathing systems for residents who can’t easily be transferred to a shower or tub — see CASRAI’s no-rinse bathing systems guide for bedbound patients, which is written for exactly this higher-dependency population.
Gloves, nitrile, stocked at real per-resident-per-day usage volumes, not a rough estimate.

Infection Prevention and PPE

Infection prevention and control in skilled nursing is a direct regulatory requirement, not a best practice layered on top — 42 CFR 483.80 (surveyed as F880) requires an infection prevention and control program, and CMS enhanced-barrier-precautions guidance specifically targets residents with indwelling devices (catheters, central lines) and wounds, which is exactly the higher-acuity population this checklist is built around. CASRAI’s enhanced barrier precautions guide covers the gown-and-glove protocol and which residents it applies to in full detail.

Gowns and gloves stocked for enhanced barrier precautions on high-contact care activities for residents with catheters, wounds, or indwelling devices — not just standard-precautions volume.
Hand hygiene supplies — alcohol-based hand rub dispensers at point of care, plus soap and water stations, positioned for actual workflow rather than only central locations.
Surface disinfectants rated for the pathogens most relevant to long-term care environments, with contact-time compliance built into the housekeeping schedule.
Sharps containers, appropriately sized and placed at point of use for insulin administration and other injectable medications.

Mobility Support and Fall Response

Mobility needs in nursing homes skew more dependent than in assisted living — a larger share of residents require full staff assistance for transfers rather than a walker or cane alone — which changes the equipment mix toward mechanical lift assistance rather than ambulation aids.

Mechanical and sit-to-stand lifts for residents who cannot bear weight independently, sized to the facility’s actual resident-weight range.
Gait belts for the residents who can still ambulate with assistance — a genuinely essential, easy-to-under-stock item.
Specialty hospital beds with adjustable height and side rails appropriate to a clinical, not residential, setting — distinct from the standard beds an assisted living facility uses.
Bed and chair alarms for residents at elevated fall risk, tied into the facility’s documented fall-prevention care plan rather than deployed ad hoc.

Building and Maintaining the List

Start from the facility’s actual case mix and acuity index rather than a generic template — a facility with a heavier post-acute/short-stay population will carry a different wound-care and catheter-supply load than one that’s primarily long-term custodial care. Reorder cadence for the highest-turnover categories (incontinence supplies, dressings, catheter kits) should run on a standing recurring order tied to census and acuity, not a manual reorder-when-low process — a stockout on wound dressings or catheter kits is a direct patient-safety event in a way it isn’t in a lower-acuity setting. Review the list against actual usage data on a real schedule, since resident acuity in skilled nursing tends to be a moving target as post-acute admissions and discharges cycle through the census.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the real difference between a nursing home and an assisted living facility for supply purposes?

A nursing home (skilled nursing facility) is federally regulated under CMS Requirements of Participation, staffed with licensed nurses around the clock, and equipped for genuinely clinical treatment — pressure-injury management, indwelling catheter care, complex wound care, IV therapy. Assisted living is state-licensed residential care focused on activities-of-daily-living support, staffed largely by certified nursing assistants and unlicensed aides, without that clinical scope. See CASRAI’s assisted living facility supply checklist for the lower-acuity list side by side with this one.

Do nursing homes need to stock supplies for both indwelling and intermittent catheterization?

Most do, since resident populations mix both catheterization approaches depending on individual clinical need. Indwelling (Foley) catheters with closed drainage systems cover residents on long-term catheterization; intermittent catheterization supplies serve residents managed on a scheduled catheterization protocol instead. Stocking only one approach forces avoidable clinical compromises when a resident’s care plan calls for the other.

How does pressure-injury staging affect what a facility should stock?

The NPIAP staging framework (Stage 1 through Stage 4, unstageable, and deep tissue pressure injury) describes increasing severity, and dressing/support-surface needs scale with it — a facility that only stocks basic dressings for early-stage or at-risk skin will be unprepared the moment a resident develops a more advanced injury. Stock across the full severity range rather than assuming the mild end covers most cases.

Is enhanced barrier precautions equipment different from standard PPE stocking?

Yes — enhanced barrier precautions specifically target residents with indwelling medical devices (catheters, central lines, tracheostomies) or wounds, requiring gown-and-glove use for defined high-contact care activities beyond what standard precautions require. See CASRAI’s enhanced barrier precautions guide for which residents and activities it applies to specifically.

What about home health aides who work with former nursing-home residents after discharge?

That’s a genuinely different supply and staffing model — a home health aide supports one client in a private home with a portable kit, not a facility-level inventory on a recurring reorder cycle. CASRAI’s home health aide supply kit guide covers that in-home equivalent directly.