Good afternoon,
Earlier this week, we received clarifications from the Department of Public Health (DPH) related to a few regulations that I’d like to tell you about, and tell you how we are implementing those changes.
Prior to discussing the regulations however, I want to reiterate that our recent procedural changes are solely in response to those changes – we do NOT have any positive cases of Covid-19 in our residents, or our staff.
As directed by DPH, all residents will be required to remain in their rooms as much as possible. That means that all meals will be served to residents in their rooms, with a few exceptions. In addition, all social interactions with activities staff will now occur in each resident room, and not in the courtyards. The logic behind the regulations is that by limiting resident to resident interaction, we can slow the spread of covid-19 should the virus find its way into our building.
In addition, DPH has stated that if residents do leave their rooms, they should be wearing a mask to protect both themselves, and others. Knowing that many of the surgical masks, and KN95 masks can be uncomfortable after wearing them for a period of time, we felt that we would get better compliance from residents if they had a more comfortable cloth mask to wear. We have issued one cloth mask to every resident, and are looking for additional cloth masks to augment our supply. If families have access to cloth masks, or the capabilities to make additional cloth masks, donations of cloth masks would be a welcome addition to our PPE supply. I’ve heard from some people that the cloth masks are difficult to properly fit to your face, particularly around the nose. Adding some sort of clasp or pliable device at the top of the masks may help alleviate that issue.
As a result of the need for residents to spend more time in their rooms, we have modified Activity schedules to enable our staff to perform one-on-one activity visits with residents, and have also deployed additional communication devices in an effort to increase the availability of Facetime or Skype calls from families.
While we all know that television does not take the place of person to person interaction, it does provide some distraction, and from time to time, entertainment. Due to the fact that our residents will be spending more time in their rooms over the next few weeks, we are now offering our satellite television service at no charge to all residents. Those that have been paying for the service, will see a credit on their next monthly statement for May’s television charge. We will continue to provide the service free of charge through the moth of June, and will reevaluate the need to continue at the end of June. Not all resident beds have a TV installed. Because of that, we are also in the process of ordering additional TV’s to be installed for all resident beds. Once they are received and installed, television services will be available to all at no cost.
Lastly, we have added an additional means of communication. Starting on Monday, anyone can call 1-888-346-9281, and hear a recording of the information included in our email updates. These recordings will be made in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. This option may be useful for family members that don’t have access to email, and for those that are not English speakers.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have.
