L+M welcoming back visitors, but just one at a time
Hospital reinvents itself amid the pandemic
New London — Calm and quiet pervade Lawrence + Memorial Hospital these days.
Neither patients nor visitors nor staff crowd hallways or other public spaces, congregate in significant numbers in meeting rooms or gather at tables in the cafeteria.
The gift shop, considered something of a treasure, is closed.
“Everything is different,” Patrick Green, the hospital's president and chief executive officer, said before leading a recent tour of some changes in the hospital's layout.
L+M, never a hotbed of COVID-19, nevertheless has had to reinvent itself in some ways as the disease has waned, particularly in its physical interaction with people who can't be allowed to forget the coronavirus hasn't entirely gone away and could spike with little or no warning.
Take the main entrance, now strictly reserved for patients and visitors who have their temperatures screened just inside the front door. They're required to stand in front of an infrared thermometer that can prevent them from advancing if it detects a temperature higher than 100 degrees. At the information desk, individuals communicate with receptionists who are separated from them by a Plexiglas shield.
Employees encounter similar setups at two separate locations where they're required to enter the building.
The spacious front lobby waiting area, formerly furnished with plenty of plush furniture, has far fewer chairs, all of which are well distanced from one another. Off the area, Baker Auditorium, the hospital’s largest conference room, is populated by spread-out tables and chairs.
“We haven’t had the whole staff in one room since the start of the pandemic,” Green said. “A lot of our staff meetings take place by Zoom. Some of our teams only communicate digitally.”
The hallways are surprisingly devoid of activity.
On the day of the tour, as on most days since late June, the hospital had no COVID-19 patients. The minimal caseload has enabled the hospital — the first in the state to ban visitors when the coronavirus struck — to ease restrictions. It now allows patients to have a visitor between 2 and 6 p.m. daily. A patient may have multiple visitors during the period but no more than one at a time, according to Dr. Oliver
Mayorga, L+M’s chief medical officer.
During the height of the pandemic, visitation was suspended altogether except in extenuating circumstances, including cases in which a patient was receiving end-of-life care or needed help coping with a psychiatric disorder or disability, Mayorga said.
L+M’s emergency room is busier than it has been in some time but has not yet returned to pre-coronavirus levels of activity. Physicians have said patients avoided emergency rooms during earlier stages of the pandemic out of an unfounded fear of contracting COVID-19.
“We’re still seeing patients who are waiting too long to come in, resulting in those who come in being admitted at greater frequency,” Mayorga said.
A room where visitors used to wait for loved ones to come out of surgery has been closed.
A hallway window on an upper floor affords a panoramic view of the cafeteria below, where the tables are well spaced and, in the late afternoon, largely empty.
“You can’t have four at a table anymore,” Green said. “We’re breaking up groups if there are too many people. Departments, teams no longer can eat together.”
So this is the new normal. Lots of space, hand sanitizer, quiet. Face masks are a given.
What might the fall and the reopening of schools bring?
“We just don’t know,” Green said. “We’re preparing for anything. And the schools are preparing for anything, too. ... We learned a lot during the first part of the pandemic. When we first started, no one knew about masking, social distancing, telecommuting — we’ve set up hundreds of telecommuting work stations for people working from home in billing, marketing, communications . ... We’re ramping up our telehealth.”
As he has before, Green attributed L+M’s ability to avoid an expected surge in COVID-19 cases to the region’s relative lack of population density and the effectiveness of stay-at-home orders in the early days of the pandemic.
“We will have some bumps, but I don’t think there will be a second wave,” Mayorga said. “The most we’ve had (in months) was two patients, I think about three weeks after July 4. I think we might see that kind of thing, but nothing major . ... I’d be worried if they open bars.”
Still, he said, the disease lingers in southeastern Connecticut, and people must remain vigilant.