Effort to ease limits on nursing home visits falters

Care facilities won’t be required to allow visitors during emergencies.

A Senate panel Wednesday vastly weakened a bill to require hospitals and nursing homes to allow visitors inside during public health emergencies, effectively nullifying the effort.

“This guts the bill,” said House Science and Technology Chairman Ed Setzler, an Acworth Republican who sponsored the legislation.

Setzler has spent much of the legislative session pushing legislation that would allow visitors inside hospitals and long-term care facilities, even during an emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

House Bill 290 had morphed since it was first introduced last month from a bill that stopped health care facilities from banning visitors from seeing sick loved ones during a health emergency to legislation that would create a “legal representative” who can visit daily with a patient.

But even that allowance was stripped from the legislation during a Senate Health and Human Services Committee meeting Wednesday.

Now, HB 290 would instruct hospitals and long-term care facilities to establish visitation policies by July 1 that are no more restrictive than guidelines set by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It also directs the Georgia Department of Community Health to set up a regulatory

system for patients and family members to report facilities with overly restrictive visitation policies.

“This way we let the public know we want to work on this issue and gives us time to continue to work and not pass language that I think, in spite of the best intentions, it is not anywhere near where it should be for residents in Georgia,” said state Sen. Dean Burke, a Bainbridge Republican and physician who sponsored the change to HB 290.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services earlier this month relaxed its visitation guidelines for nursing homes, allowing those facilities with high resident vaccination rates in communities with low COVID-19 infection rates to accept visitors indoor.

The bill went through various revisions and more than eight hours of hearings this legislativesession, including emotional testimony from Georgians who in some cases have not been able to touch their elderly or chronically sick loved ones in more than a year. The measure passed the House 113-57 earlier this month after a floor speech from House Speaker David Ralston.

Opponents have said they are concerned that allowing additional people into health care facilities no matter the circumstances could further exacerbate the problem during a pandemic.

The legislation will next be considered for debate on the Senate floor. If passed by the Senate, the House would also need to approve the change before the bill could become law.