CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MAY 4, 2021, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NURSING HOMES: HIGH TIME FOR LOOSER
VISITATION”
It is
high time nursing homes loosen up and abandon most of the pandemic-induced
rules that have limited visitors to nearly none for more than a year.
Similarly,
assisted living homes that have prevented their residents from venturing into
the rest of the world on pain of two week quarantines within their rooms when
they return also need to get sensible.
Those
rules seemed reasonable during the height of the coronavirus surges that
plagued this nation starting in March 2020.
They
appeared prudent at first, but only until the infections afflicting and killing
more nursing home residents than people in any other living arrangement made it
crystal clear that the restrictions were not working. Those rules always
presumed that isolating denizens of nursing homes would prevent them from
infecting one other.
Yet,
they became infected and died by the hundreds of thousands over the last 15
months anyhow. That happened because while residents and patients could be
isolated, the staffers caring for them could not. Nursing home workers at all
levels from the lowliest aides to top-ranking facility directors went out into
the world. Like everyone else, some isolated themselves carefully at home and
did not venture into bars or onto crowded beaches. Some went to those places.
Some masked whenever they were not at home, others didn’t bother except in
grocery stores and places where masking was required for entry.
This all
explains why nursing home residents and staff were among the first to receive
COVID-19 vaccines when they became available in late December. As a result,
nursing home rates of infection with the virus have run below those in the
general community for more than two months. Cases there are down more than 90
percent since last fall, but visits remain limited, often just one guest per
day per resident.
Lower
caseloads do not mean effects of the crisis are over. Many months of near
isolation from friends and relatives created other problems for nursing home
residents who had been accustomed to seeing visitors regularly.
Advocates
of nursing home residents say they need those visits for mental health, to give
them a sense of purpose, a reason for going on with life.
Those
concerns may have been outweighed at the height of the crisis, but no more.
“The
residents, the families, the caregivers have all had enough,” Michael
Wasserman, past president of the California Assn. of Long Term Care Medicine,
told a reporter. “We’re now approaching the point where, if you’re not
vaccinated in a nursing home (and some residents have declined), the primary
risk is to yourself (and not to fellow residents).”
Yes, from
the earliest days of the pandemic, television showed moving scenes of nursing
home residents seeing relatives through ground-floor windows as the only form
of visitation open to them.
This was
heart-rending, if not as damaging as the fact terminal Covid patients were not
allowed even deathbed visitors in hospitals, and were forced to say farewell to
their families via cellphone – where that service was available.
Even now,
nursing home management is not agitating or lobbying government for an end to
the extreme limits on visitation. This may be because pre-pandemic visitors
were the main check on those owners, with relatives and other guests often
noticing patients who were dehydrated, soiled bedding and other problems the
residents themselves may have felt too weak or dependent to protest. The
relationship between nursing home operators and visitors has long been uneasy.
So long
as Covid ran rampant among their residents, the operators were relieved of all
this.
That’s
over, thanks to mass vaccination efforts, often led by drugstore chain
employees who carried syringes into the homes.
So it’s
high time state authorities ordered an end to the pandemic rules. Perhaps a
transition, with visitation at levels somewhere below unlimited, is appropriate
until the nursing home toll has been lowered even further.
But
progress in cutting back incidence of this plague has at least been sufficient
to end the companion plague of isolation that preyed on residents’ mental and
emotional health at the very time the virus hit them physically.
-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
No comments:
Post a Comment