CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2020 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2020 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NURSING
HOME VISITORS: IMPROVEMENT, BUT NOT MUCH”
The good news in California
nursing homes this summer is that some are allowing their residents to see
visitors at long last, but almost exclusively outdoors and in very controlled
circumstances where the guests have little chance to see what’s happening
inside the homes.
This small, far-from-universal
change is largely the result of a slight improvement in a key state guideline
governing nursing homes.
The change: The state
Department of Public Health (DPH) no longer merely recommends that nursing
homes allow residents to designate one person to visit during the COVID-19
pandemic if the visitors distance, don masks and other personal protective
equipment. In late June, the DPH began mandating that nursing home denizens
“shall” be allowed to pick a guest.
That’s a big improvement for
the relatively few residents of the homes who now get occasional visits.
Previously, all visitors had been banned from the homes, even state inspectors.
This amounted to carte blanche for many nursing home managements to reduce
staff (especially with state staffing requirements suspended early on) and keep
disabled residents in bed for days at a time. Even on days when they’re allowed
out of bed, staffers often stash them back there around mid-afternoon because
workloads are so large they would not otherwise have time to serve dinner to
all their patients.
Essentially, visitors have
lost their previous role as the main watchdogs over nursing home practices.
The intent of the original
visitor ban was to keep the coronavirus plague out of the homes. That policy
has failed, what with about 49 percent – almost half – of all California
COVID-19 deaths occurring among those residing in nursing homes, as of early
July.
“(The ban) has been an extreme
hardship for most nursing home patients,” said Lori Smetanka, executive
director of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long Term Care. “It has led
to significant physical, social and psychological harm for many thousands of
residents. Their needs are worsening without families to visit them.” She added
that even when virtual visits via services like Zoom and Facetime are arranged,
“they often prove disruptive to residents, especially those with cognitive
impairments.”
That adds to a climate
described this way by one 76-year-old physically handicapped nursing home
resident who retains all his mental faculties: “The nursing home establishment
makes people feel like ‘throw-aways,” he wrote in an email. “We feel much like
abandoned pets or children with disabilities. This makes it difficult to
maintain the attitude and motivation you need to feel like a human being in
here.”
Lawyer
Tony Chicotel of the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform organization
describes the last four months for a typical resident of this state’s nursing
homes as “very much like solitary confinement,” adding that most are even worse
off than that, because they share rooms and get little privacy outside their
own thoughts.
“This
is institutionalized isolation,” Chicotel said. “Some call it a form of
solitary confinement. It’s become inhumane and cruel. This has been done to
people without any consultation or due process. And the no visitor policy has
been a colossal failure, too.” In fact, most of the COVID-19 that has so
severely hit nursing homes came into them with staffers, who often must work
two jobs because of their low pay. Even if one home where they work is “clean,”
they can become infected at their second job or in crowded conditions where
they live.
Then
there’s assisted living, where residents often pay large sums for rooms and
apartments. They also have had no visitors, reports Chicotel. But unlike
nursing home residents, they are allowed out for excursions, medical
appointments or other needs. The rub, says Chicotel: On their return, most
assisted living homes require residents who leave even for short times to
quarantine for 14 days, never leaving their rooms during that time for any
reason.
As a
result, few ever leave and many residents suffer isolation similar to nursing
home patients.
If a
society can be judged by the way it cares for its grandparents and other
elders, what does all this say about California and the rest of America, where
the same situations apply almost everywhere?
-30-
Email Thomas Elias
at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising
Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now
available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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