In 2010 The Salt Lake Valley Health Department (SLVHD) conducted a pilot of an announced inspection program utilizing a randomized assignment of restaurants to an intervention group with announced inspections and a control group which remained on the usual schedule of unannounced inspections. A total of 122 restaurants were included in the study; the intervention group consisted of 63 restaurants and the control group included 59 establishments. Each restaurant was inspected four times during the study period.
Outcome variables in this study included the five most frequently cited critical violations in Salt Lake County – poor hygiene practices, improper holding temperatures, unclean food equipment, failure to protect from cross-contamination, and improper sanitizer concentration levels.
After adjusting for food type, visible kitchen, outside quality assurance, season and standardized inspector, significant reductions were found in the odds of personal hygiene and equipment cleanliness violations.
Oriental food restaurants had significantly increased odds of being cited for a targeted violation compared to American restaurants, but this was only for cross-contamination violations and sanitizer concentration violations.
Restaurants with a visible kitchen were at a significantly lower risk of cross-contamination violations compared to restaurants without a visible kitchen. Utilizing outside quality assurance reduced the odds of a cross-contamination violation, but had no significant effect with any of the other targeted violations.
The season in which the inspection was conducted had no significant association with any of the outcome measures with the exception of equipment cleanliness violations.
FDA standardized inspectors were twice as likely to cite holding temperature violations compared to non-standardized inspectors, however the odds of a standardized inspector citing equipment cleanliness violations was about half of a non-standardized inspector.
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