What if we took an in-depth look at how COVID-19 is impacting long term care
Nicole and Cooper welcome back Dr. Betty Lim, telemedicine physician, staff physician and geriatrician, to get a look at COVID-19 from the ground level in New York and New Jersey. Facilities are a firewall. If that firewall is breached we have now seen what happens when COVID-19 enters a facility already in this country and around the world. The firewall in essence are the protocols we put in place. In regions where the local hospitals have positive cases of COVID-19 we need to come with protocols about how we are going to monitor residents that are being accepted back into these communities. Many SNFs are not taking new admissions that were not residents of that existing community. Others are taking more strict measures where they are not taking any residents back that have been to hospitals that have patients with COVID-19. These strict protocols in any other time would seem extremely restrictive however in a time like this Dr. Lim explains that they are going to be critical in keeping this out of these long-term-care communities. No exceptions. It is always the exception that gets us into trouble. The exceptions are going to be what breach the firewall and threaten the facilities.
It is essential to restrict visitors, to have a surveillance program for communities that have residents that can still get into the outside community.
We need to have a protocol for how to keep the residents in place and how to monitor them if they have been out shopping or running any other type of errands.
Protocols are needed about how to keep people in their rooms, on how we monitor the staff that comes in and out (ie checking temperature of staff as they are coming in and out of the facility).