Visitor restrictions relaxed for AAMC, Doctors Community
Anne Arundel Medical Center and Doctors Community Medical Center started allowing visitors again Thursday, with one to two visitors per patient as COVID-19 restrictions ease.
Visitor hours at Anne Arundel Medical
Center in Annapolis are 12 to 8 p.m. At Doctors Community Medical Center in Lanham, visiting hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Anne Arundel and Doctors Community medical centers are both part of Luminis Health.
Visitation varies depending on the patient’s situation, the health care company said in an announcement Thursday. General patients in ICU or surgical patients can have two visitors. Labor and delivery patients and emergency patients can have only one visitor, said Barbara Jacobs, chief nursing officer for Anne Arundel Medical Center.
After shutting down at the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year, Jacobs said visitation reopened in August 2020 after a lull in new cases then closed again in November during a fall spike. The hospital was doing a lot of zoom and phone calls for patients while there were not visitors, Jacobs said.
The decision comes as Anne Arundel County is experiencing a bump in the rate of coronavirus infections, with cases are creeping back up after falling for seven weeks. The county case rate reached 16.6 cases per 100,000 people Thursday, the highest in Maryland.
The deciding factors to open visitation were the positivity rate in the region, and the number of patients at the hospital. Luminis used data analytics to predict how many patients they may have and that showed their number of patients with COVID going down, Jacobs said.
In January, the hospital had over 100 patients with COVID but on Thursday they had 26.
“We have to make sure we keep our patients safe but also the staff,” Jacobs said. “When we felt comfortable the predictions were right that’s when we decided to bring visitors in safely.”
Patricia Brown, a patient at the medical center, felt great when she heard visitation was opening.
“I was kind of down in the dumps and frustrated because I’ve been in so long but when they came it kind of lifted my spirits,” Brown said.
She said it means everything to her to be able to have visitors again.
While Brown said her doctor had worked out for her to be able to see one patient at a time, as Jacobs said had been done in certain cases during the pandemic, she is glad that now her son and daughter-in-law come to visit her together.
“I am very close with my family and I have their total support in everything,” Brown said.
Clergy of any denomination may visit a patient at any time and does not count in visitation totals, the hospital said.
“Caring for and protecting our patients, families, employees, and the community during this pandemic has been our top priority,” Luminis Health CEO Victoria Bayless said in a statement released by the hospital company. “We recognize this past year has been difficult for patients and their loved ones. The new procedures will bring muchneeded support to our patients while keeping everyone safe. We thank everyone for their patience and ask them to remain vigilant.”
Visitors will be screened upon entry to the hospital and must:
Wear an appropriate mask at all times while in the hospital (even if vaccinated). Maintain social distancing from all others. Wash or sanitize their hands throughout their visit.