DeSantis loosens rules for nursing-home visits and leaves decisions to facilities
Florida will loosen restrictions on visits to longterm-care facilities, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday. The change might have major consequences for the state’s most vulnerable residents.
Floridians have been allowed to visit loved ones in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities with some restrictions since Sept. 1. But now, DeSantis said, general visitors are allowed to meet with residents outdoors even if a COVID-19 case has been recently reported in the facility. General indoor visits are still banned within 14 days of a staffer or resident testing positive, DeSantis said.
People whom the state deems “compassionate caregivers” can visit loved ones indoors even if the facility has a confirmed case. DeSantis also announced Florida will remove social-distancing restrictions for those caregivers. Family members will be allowed to hug loved ones when they visit these facilities.
Finally, there will no longer be restrictions on children visiting the facilities, and the number of visitors allowed at one time will be left up to individual homes, DeSantis said.
In announcing these new policies, the governor made the same argument that he has made for months: Lockdowns are ineffective, and they’re bad for people’s health.
“There have been instances in which, some of these [places] had no visitors for a long time,”
DeSantis said during a news conference in Fort Myers. “And even locally, there was even other restrictions in the community. You still had outbreaks.”
Officials hope the new guidelines, combined with the state’s distribution of millions of rapid tests to long-term-care facilities, will facilitate a return to normalcy. But questions remain about Florida’s testing strategy at these facilities.
For instance, in September, the state stopped requiring — and funding — the periodic testing of employees at assistedliving facilities. This month, the state began to supply rapid tests to many of those facilities to help them keep up a rigorous testing regimen.
But on a call last week with assisted-living-facility administrators, officials cautioned that facilities must meet federal regulations to process test results.
“The requirement to do a point-of-care test does require that you have a lab license or waiver,” Molly McKinstry, a deputy secretary at the Agency for Health Care Administration, said on the call.
Many assisted-living facilities do not have such licenses, making testing more difficult as the governor allows more access for visitors than at any point during the coronavirus pandemic.
A recent dashboard from AARP showed that Florida has had more nursing-home cases and deaths than the national average.