Archive for category: Nursing

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulate nursing facilities, are lifting the ban on visitors, effective immediately. CMS imposed the restriction in March in an effort to control outbreaks of the coronavirus.

Advocates for nursing home residents and family organizations have been clamoring for a repeal, noting the many residents who have suffered anxiety or depression, as well as physical or mental decline since the ban was imposed. The issue was also raised in the report of the Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes, which became public on Wednesday.

Now, all nursing homes can allow outdoor visits with social distancing, as a few states have recently allowed. And most nursing homes can allow indoor visits as long as there have been no new COVID-19 infections in the past 2 weeks and the infection rate in the surrounding county is no more than 10%. But CMS recommends that nursing homes limit how many visitors a resident can have at one time, as well as limiting the number of visitors that can be in the facility at once.

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Nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center were on edge as early as March when patients with COVID-19 began to show up in areas of the hospital that were not set aside to care for them.

Fearing the experimental use of hydroxychloroquine went “unchecked” in nursing homes struck by the coronavirus, three U.S. senators are calling on federal authorities to determine whether providers improperly treated patients, failed to disclose serious side effects or faced any repercussions from regulators responsible for oversight of the industry.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo brushed off concerns that his administration was undercounting nursing home deaths due to COVID-19 by not counting nursing home residents who died in hospitals.

Unlike the federal government and other states, New York is the only state to explicitly say it only counts residents who died on nursing home property from coronavirus in its count of nursing home deaths. Those who were transported to hospitals and died there are added to a separate count.

“If you die in the nursing home, it’s a nursing home death. If you die in the hospital, it’s called a hospital death,” the Democratic governor told Albany public radio station WAMC on Wednesday. “It doesn’t say where were you before.”

Cuomo explained that if the state were to count a death as a hospital death and a nursing home death it would lead to a “double count.”

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In the first week of June, Karen Hirth did something the coronavirus had prevented her from doing for three months: move her 80-year-old Aunt Georgia into a nursing home.

It wasn’t a hard decision. Georgia had been declining both physically and mentally for several months. A broken hip had sent her to the Fondulac Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in East Peoria, Ill. a few years earlier for physical therapy. She knew the staff and liked the facility. Still, moving there permanently during a pandemic created some anxiety for Hirth.

“She was quarantined for 14 days, but now she can leave her room as long as she wears a mask and stays at least 6 feet away from other residents,” says Hirth.

So far, Hirth is giving her aunt’s nursing home high marks. Hirth gets regular updates from its social worker and recently has been allowed to visit Georgia on a patio with Plexiglass separating them.

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