By Erin Durkin, National Journal, February 10 2021 Groups representing residents and families claim some facilities are still enforcing restrictions on visits that don’t align with federal guidance—like prohibiting indoor visitations even when there haven’t been recent COVID-19 cases. When the pandemic started its spread across the U.S., taking a massive deadly toll on nursing homes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services immediately directed facilities to restrict almost all visitors.
Visitation Articles82 posts
As more nursing homes receive COVID-19 vaccine, relatives demand greater access to residents
By Laura Romero, ABC News, February 9 2021 After a year of isolation, there’s a push to open doors at long-term care homes. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Marcella Goheen would visit her husband at a nursing home every day. As an essential care visitor, she would spend about 40 hours a week conducting neurotherapy and other assisted living tasks for her husband, who suffers from a neurodegenerative disability.
Nursing Home Patients Are Dying of Loneliness
By The Editorial Board, NY Times, December 29 2020 When she had the routine of home, Angie Sinopoli was the talkative matriarch of a large Italian family who heaped praise on her children and grandchildren, even as her memory faded. Her youngest son, Steven, came by her house and cooked her dinner nearly every night. But after a couple of falls and bouts in rehabilitation centers, she ended up in a Syracuse nursing home on March 10.
COVID has been devastating nursing homes. Can it change how the US thinks of end-of-life care?
Written by Amy Ta, produced by Bennett Purser, KCRW, Dec. 09, 2020 “What we have in the nursing home industry is decades of chronic understaffing for a variety of reasons. And during the pandemic, that’s just been exacerbated,” says R. Tamara Konetzka, a health economist at the University of Chicago who studies long-term care.Image by truthseeker08 from Pixabay Nearly 300,000 people in the U.S.
Social isolation takes toll on Southern California nursing home residents during pandemic holidays
By Brenda Gazzar, Los Angeles Times, December 7 2020 In recent survey, more than three-quarters of nursing home residents who responded said they felt lonelier than usual during the pandemic, while nearly two-thirds said they did not leave their rooms to socialize. Melody Taylor Stark poses for a photo after visiting her husband, Dr. William Stark, who was a resident of Huntington Drive Health and Rehabilitation Center in Arcadia, Thursday, October 8, 2020.
Voices from the Pandemic: Bruce MacGillis
As told to Eli Saslow, The Washington Post, December 5, 2020 Bruce MacGillis ‘Do people understand what’s happening here? Do they care?’Bruce MacGillis, on the excruciating wait for a vaccine inside a coronavirus-infected nursing home I’m happy they put us at the top of the list, but I doubt it’s going to make much of a difference in here.
State to allow visitors inside nursing homes in most California counties
By Barbara Feder Ostrov, CALmatters, October 26 2020 After months of being unable to have in-person visits amid the pandemic, families across California will now be permitted indoor visits with loved ones in many nursing facilities after new guidance was released by the California Department of Public Health on Friday. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters The pandemic had limited loved ones to window or patio visits – if at all – but new guidance lifts restrictions in those 46 counties with better virus control.
Dying of loneliness: How COVID-19 is killing dementia patients
By Allison Griner, Al Jazeera, October 22 2020 [All illustrations by Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera] Elderly people living in care homes are not just dying from coronavirus; they are dying because of the response to it. Teresa Palmer is sitting on the back porch of her home in San Francisco when the mobile phone in her hand starts to buzz.
ISOLATED: States begin to allow nursing home visitors but face PPE shortages, logistical questions
By Daniela Molina, Jill Riepenhoff, and Lee Zurik, WBTV 3, October 16 2020 (InvestigateTV) – For seven months, sisters Jill Starke and Carla Helmig repeated to their mother by phone or through a window at her nursing home, “We’ll see you soon.” They knew it was a lie. But they wanted their mother, Betty Virginia Starke, to stay strong as COVID-19 locked them out of the Missouri nursing home where she lived.
An Inside Look At How Covid-19 Is Driving An Epidemic Of Loneliness In Nursing Homes
By Howard Gleckman, Forbes, October 8 2020 MARLBOROUGH, MA – AUGUST 19: Sr. Jeanne Fregeau, 93, waits for her morning medication at St. Chretienne Retirement Residence. Since COVID-19 spread through the facility in April the chapel has been closed, leaving the residents to watch Mass on television. (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) What has it been like to live in a nursing home during the covid-19 pandemic?