Best news of year: Nursing home visits resume in Pa.
Need an example of how illogical some of Pennsylvania’s coronavirus restrictions have been?
For nearly a year, Eileen Lane hardly saw one of her sisters. With a few exceptions, visitors were not allowed at Phoebe nursing home in Allentown where her sister, Marian Panzarella, lives.
Those rules stayed in place even after Panzarella and other residents were vaccinated.
But when Panzarella was hospitalized recently, visitors were welcome there. Not just one. She could have three, as long as they wore masks.
“Let’s apply some logic,” Lane, of Breinigsville, told me last Friday morning.
Last Friday afternoon, the light bulb finally went on.
Hours after I talked to Lane, Pennsylvania officials “strongly encouraged” nursing homes, personal care homes and assisted living facilities to immediately follow new federal guidance and allow visitors inside, except under limited circumstances.
Unvaccinated residents should have indoor visitors only if at least 70% of residents have been vaccinated and the county’s test positivity is less than 10%, according to the guidance issued March 10 from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The guidance stresses that visits could occur even if there is an outbreak at a facility, as long as there is evidence that it is contained to a single unit or section. Residents who are infected with COVID-19 or in quarantine should not have visitors.
Visitors should be allowed regardless of whether they have been vaccinated, without having to be tested. Visits are encouraged to occur outdoors, but also could take place in residents’ rooms or visitation areas.
Many of Pennsylvania’s senior care communities could have visits under
those guidelines, said Zach Shamberg, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association. It represents about 400 nursing homes, personal care homes and assisted living centers.
“We appreciate the Department of Health’s quick action in adopting this guidance in Pennsylvania, which will help reunite our most vulnerable residents in long-term care with their family members and loved ones,” he said.
For Lane and her family, the new rules are a huge relief.
She doesn’t blame Phoebe for restricting visitors during the pandemic. She believes the home did
the best it could. She understands it had to follow the state’s rules.
The state should have eased those rules sooner.
Many long-term care residents have been vaccinated for weeks or even months now. Many of their visitors are older and have been vaccinated, too. Many of Panzarella’s relatives have been.
State officials repeatedly told me over the past month that they would not make any changes until federal authorities issued new guidance. That was unnecessary. The state could have relaxed restrictions on its own, as other states did.
Lane plans to see Panzarella as often as she can. She used to have so many visitors that Phoebe staff would joke about there being a parade to her room.
“We never expected it to last for an entire year,” Lane told me. “As it dragged on, it really just took its toll.”
“We’re a big family and we get together for holidays. We bring her home. She’s part of every holiday dinner. Whether it was Easter last year or even just a barbecue in the summertime. Thanksgiving and Christmas, they all went by and she couldn’t be part of it. So there she was, all alone, by herself in her room, for every single one of these holidays.”
The family did its best to keep in touch with her and keep her spirits up. They would deliver packages with cookies and other items. Sometimes, though, they weren’t allowed to drop them off and had to mail them.
They talked by phone and on Zoom video calls. But the video calls were limited to 15 minutes. And phone calls weren’t easy because Panzarella has Parkinson’s disease.
“She can’t always hold the receiver of the telephone because she has a landline,” Lane said.
Panzarella had been able to have visitors for a brief time in August, when COVID cases bottomed out in Pennsylvania and many nursing homes were able to meet the guidelines in place then.
Lane said those visits weren’t much different from visiting someone in prison.
“She sat in a little cubicle. We sat on the other side with headphones. And then at the end, they had a shower curtain where we put holes in it and we could actually give each other a hug. But it was with a shower curtain in the middle.”
Lane was so frustrated at the lack of visits that she wrote to Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam last week.
“While CDC, state government and public health officials view ... residents as a statistic, we view them as our loved ones. Our mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers or spouse — who we celebrated birthdays together, took trips together, raised children together and lived our lives together. That’s the point. We want to get back together,” Lane wrote in the letter, which she also sent to me.
State officials said last Friday that under the new rules, if a resident is fully vaccinated, they can choose to have close contact, including touch, with their visitor while wearing a well-fitting mask.
That means there will be a lot of hugging soon. Without shower curtains.