Nurse, husband must live apart
After a long day as an ER nurse at Kaiser Richmond, Chad Baker goes “home” to a hotel.
He can’t risk exposing his husband, Tom Baker, who has respiratory issues and a compromised immune system, to the coronavirus. So the couple are staying apart.
Chad Baker is paying $2,000 a month for a room at Extended Stay America. His requests to Kaiser to be reimbursed were denied. Instead, he said he was told to selfquarantine at home, but their house is too small for that to work.
Kaiser said it is working on a comprehensive employee assistance pro
gram.
During the pandemic, hotel costs may be covered for medical professionals who must isolate because they have come down with COVID19 or have been ordered to quarantine because they’ve been exposed. But there is no universal policy to cover a situation where a doctor or nurse voluntarily separates from loved ones who are particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus.
For Baker, the hotel cost — which is more than his mortgage payment — is a financial hit to his savings, but it’s the emotional toll of being alone that’s hardest.
“My husband is my rock,” he said. “I’m lucky I have a husband who’s very intuitive as to whether I need silence or a diversion or just a really good homecooked meal.”
They phone and FaceTime often, but it’s not the same as curling up together on the couch.
And rather than homecooked meals, he’s subsisting on microwaved ramen, mac and cheese and takeout.
“It’s like being back in college,” he said.
Like many medical professionals, Baker, who is clocking in about 15 hours a week of overtime on top of his regular hours, sprang for his own protective gear, buying goggles at Home Depot and reusing masks even though that’s not recommended.
“We know there is a huge shortage of (personal protective equipment), but it is our employers’ responsibility to keep employees safe and equipped,” he said.
Likewise, he feels that his employer should cover his housing while he’s displaced.
“My hope is that Kaiser Permanente and other health care systems across the nation will help those of us that are the front lines of this battle against the coronavirus to stay healthy and help us protect our families,” he said.
Kaiser said in a statement that it is grateful to employees and committed to giving them help and resources based on their individual situations.
“We are presently evaluating the scope of what these needs are and how to best respond, and we expect to communicate details directly to our employees in the next week,” Lawrence Hamilton, medical group administrator for Kaiser Permanente Oakland and Richmond Medical Centers, said in a statement.
While Kaiser is not currently covering hotel expenses for employees, it is establishing an employee discount program with Marriott, a spokesman said. It also is creating a fund where people can “make financial contributions to assist our health care workers with their needs arising from the pandemic,” Hamilton said.
Wendy Musell, a San Francisco attorney who is consulting with Baker, said she hopes Kaiser will address such needs for all its workers.
“It is emotionally difficult to be separated from your family doing grueling work under such circumstances and then have to foot the bill to boot,” she said.
The California Nurses Association, the state nurses union, said hospitals should step up to accommodate health care workers in cases like this.
Nurses increasingly fear infecting their families, it said.
“If a family member in the household is immunocompromised, the risk of infection increases as does the potential to cause permanent injury, including death,” the nurses group said in a statement. “If employers are not providing the necessary protections, one presumes a nurse is vulnerable to the virus, and if isolating from family members is necessary to preserve the health of their family members, employers should be responsible for that.”
Around the state, some hospitals and cities are starting to offer accommodations for nurses and other health care workers battling the pandemic.
UCSF, UCLA Health and UC San Diego Health are housing nurses during the crisis at the urging of the nurses union, it said.
UCSF, which has rooms at the JW Marriott Union Square, lets its health care workers stay free for up to three nights; it reviews requests for longer stays on a casebycase basis, according to an FAQ on the program. Workers can stay for a variety of reasons, including their choice to selfisolate.
Some Airbnb hosts offer free or subsidized housing for health care workers through the shortterm rental website.
San Francisco is in negotiations with many hotels to rent rooms for health care workers. It will offer them to workers who need to isolate or quarantine themselves, or are traveling from elsewhere.
Workers like Baker who want to avoid infecting family members will also be able to use the lodgings. In fact, they “will be by far the largest category of those taking the rooms,” Trent Rhorer, head of the city’s Human Services Agency, said in an email.
Public health departments in Alameda and Contra Costa counties did not immediately respond to questions about whether they would offer accommodations for health care workers.
“We’re pleased that they are offering housing that we can use so we won’t go home and infect the people we live with,” said Valerie Ewald, an ICU nurse at UCLA. “We nurses and all health care workers are feeling stressed.”
“I’m lucky I have a husband who’s very intuitive as to whether I need silence or a diversion or just a really good homecooked meal.”
Chad Baker, Kaiser nurse