San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘Protected them to death’: Elder-care virus rules under fire
Barbara and Christine Colucci long to remove their masks and kiss their 102-year-old mother, who has dementia and is in a nursing home in Rochester, N.Y. They would love to have more than two people in her room at a time so that relatives can be there too.
“We don’t know how much longer she’s going to be alive,” Christine Colucci said, “so it’s like, please, give us this last chance with her in her final months on this earth to have that interaction.”
Pandemic restrictions are falling away almost everywhere — except inside many of America’s nursing homes. Rules designed to protect the nation’s most vulnerable from COVID-19 are still being enforced even though 75 percent of nursing home residents are now vaccinated and infections and deaths have plummeted.
Frustration has set in as families around the country visit their moms and, this Father’s Day weekend, their dads. Hugs and kisses are still discouraged or banned in some nursing homes. Residents are dining in relative isolation and playing bingo and doing crafts at a distance. Visits are limited and must be kept short, and are cut off entirely if someone tests positive for the coronavirus.
Limits still in place
Family members and advocates question the need for such restrictions at this stage of the pandemic, when the risk is comparatively low. They say the measures are now just prolonging older people’s isolation and accelerating their mental and physical decline.
“They have protected them to death,” said Denise Gracely, whose 80-year-old mother, Marian
Rauenzahn, lives in a nursing home in Topton, Pa.
Rauenzahn had COVID-19 and then lost part of a leg to gangrene, but Graceley said what she struggled with the most was enforced solitude, going from six-day-aweek visits to none at all.
Rauenzahn’s daughters eventually won the right to see her once a week, and the nursing home now says it plans to relax the rules on visits for all residents in late June. But it has not been not enough, as far as Graceley is concerned.
“I believe it’s progressed her dementia,” Graceley said. “She’s very lonely. She wants out of there so bad.”
A recent survey by National Consumer Voice for Quality LongTerm Care, an advocacy group, found time limits on visits remain
commonplace, ranging from 15 minutes to two hours. Some facilities limit visiting hours to weekdays, making it difficult for people who work during the day, or restrict visits to once or twice a week.
Rauenzahn’s Pennsylvania nursing home has been limiting most residents to a single, 30minute visit every two weeks.
Federal authorities should “restore full visitation rights to nursing home residents without delay,” Consumer Voice and several other advocacy groups said in a June 11 letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Residents are “continuing to suffer from isolation and decline because of the limited visitation permitted in the current guidance,” the letter said.
Advocates also take issue with
federal guidance on how nursing homes deal with new COVID-19 cases. The guidance says most visits should be suspended for at least 14 days. Some family members, administrators and advocates complain that the recommendation has led to frequent lockdowns because of one or two cases.
“We’ve never had a real long, lengthy period of time where we’re able to have visitors,” said Jason Santiago, chief operating officer at the Manor at Seneca Hill in Oswego, N.Y. He said continued isolation is inflicting a heavy toll. “We’ve got to do things that make more sense for these residents, make more sense for these families.“
With the virus infecting more than 650,000 long-term-care residents and killing more than 130,000 across the U.S., nursing homes had a duty to take precautions when COVID-19 was out of control, said Nancy Kass, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University. But she said she is baffled by the continued heavy emphasis on safety at the expense of residents’ quality of life, given “we’re not in that state of affairs anymore.”
‘A breaking point’
In Ohio, Bob Greve was desperate for a change of scenery after being cooped up in his Cincinnati-area nursing home for most of the last year. But the administrator wouldn’t permit a visit to his son’s house because of COVID-19 concerns — even though both men are fully vaccinated.
The policy led Greve to a “breaking point,” according to his son, Mike Greve, who said his 89-year-old father called six, eight, even 10 times a day out of boredom and frustration and talked constantly about getting out.
Mike Greve said he pressed the nursing home administrator for outside forays, only to be told: “If I let you take your father out, I have to let everybody else.” Greve said the administrator was worried about residents bringing COVID-19 back with them.
The administrator did not return phone and email messages from the Associated Press. A day after AP sought comment, Greve said, the administrator called him into the office, offered to allow his father out for a visit and said the policy would be changed for everyone else, too.
Father and son spent a glorious afternoon soaking in the sunshine at Greve’s house, where his dad spotted a deer.
“He said, ‘Hallelujah’ I don’t know how many times,” Greve said. “He said, ‘I don’t know how you got me out, but I’m so happy I could cry.’ ”