COVID Regional Health Response crucial to saving long-term care residents

Few Americans have suffered more throughout this pandemic than our loved ones in long-term care.

In Pennsylvania, more than 157,000 older adults and individuals with disabilities living in long term facilities have been disproportionately and, in some cases, unnecessarily impacted. As part of a comprehensive strategy to protect them, the commonwealth launched the Regional Response Health Collaboration Program (RRHCP) which works in concert with the Pennsylvania National Guard.

As Pennsylvania’s State Long-Term Care Ombudsman, the commonwealth’s chief advocate for nursing home residents’ rights and quality of care, I have seen firsthand how the RRHCP directly, strategically, and effectively supports our vulnerable long-term care communities through coordinated site preparation, infection prevention, outbreak response, and staff education.

These response teams are the embodiment of our commonwealth’s strategic approach to fighting the spread of the virus within longterm care settings like nursing home and assisted living communities. They are reallife heroes who provide vulnerable residents, worried families and exhausted direct care workers help and hope.

In June 2020, the Pennsylvania General Assembly allocated $175 million from Pennsylvania’s CARES Act funding to establish the RRHCP. It is a partnership between Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS), Department of Health (DOH) and Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) to provide clinical and operational support to long-term care facilities in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, federal funding supporting this life-saving support team is scheduled to end December 30, just as our commonwealth is facing its greatest surge in COVID-19 cases. We cannot allow this to happen.

The Wolf Administration has called for the federal government to reauthorize Title 32 to support National Guard deployment in these life-saving missions and is working with the Pennsylvania Congressional Delegation to advocate for greater support at the federal level. I feel compelled to share my perspective on why this support is so critical and why we need our federal and state leadership to continue to be responsive to and supportive of the RRHCs and PA National Guard in caring for our older adults.

Throughout this pandemic, members of my team and I have worked side-byside with the University of Pennsylvania in partnership with Temple University Hospital; Thomas Jefferson University in partnership with Main Line Health and Lehigh Valley Health Network; and the Pennsylvania State University when long-term care facilities have experienced COVID-19 outbreaks they would not have been able to address on their own.

We ensure resident advocacy takes place in collaboration with the RRHCs, DOH and DHS. We ensure residents’ rights under federal and state regulations are upheld throughout the RRHC missions, such as consent to transfer, support of resident choice in transfers, serving as an advocacy point of contact for loved ones and legal decision-makers when transfers are proposed. Additionally, ombudsmen uphold the residents’ right to quality individualized care before, during, and after the RRHC missions.

Initially, my concern was that the presence of the Pennsylvania National Guard members in a facility with the RRHC medical staff in full PPE would be jarring and alarming to residents. I was wrong.

In fact, the presence of the PA National Guard and the RRHCP clinical staff, nurses and medics signaled to the residents and their loved ones that coordinated help had arrived. Meals were back on schedule. Staffing levels were made adequate and call bells were answered in a timely fashion. Protocols were securely put in place to stop the infection from spreading. Residents stopped getting sick and, more importantly, they stopped dying.

Residents and their families have expressed nothing but gratitude for the systems the commonwealth has created to protect and preserve their lives.

The Office of the LongTerm Care Ombudsman commends the RRHCs, along with the women and men of the PA National Guard, for their expertise and the vital role they play in keeping long-term care residents safe while ultimately decreasing the number of cases and deaths of Pennsylvanians.

Without the continued critical services and support of RRHCPs, long-term care facilities will be ill-prepared to respond to outbreaks, just as they were in the first wave. We now know that when facilities try to care for residents, while simultaneously trying to respond to a COVID-19 outbreak, it places all residents and employees at risk. Therefore, the longterm care industry should welcome and embrace the support being provided by the RRHCs during this critical time.

All older adults living in long-term care deserve – and all who care for them must demand – that this program be sustained.