To All South Cove Family Members and Friends:
When I last sent out an email, we had just completed testing of staff and residents, and all test results had come back negative. It has been two weeks sine that communication, and I am happy to say that we continue to have zero positive cases of Covid-19 in our building, including staff and residents.
At the time I am writing this letter, 320 of the 383 nursing homes in Massachusetts have reported 2 or more positive cases of the virus within their building. South Cove Manor is among the 16% of Massachusetts nursing homes that can say we do not fall in that category. While our team at South Cove is incredibly proud of our accomplishments to date, we all know that could change in an instant. We continue to be diligent in the screening of our staff, proper use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and following all Infection Control procedures to the letter. As always, Hand hygiene is one of the key elements to preventing the spread of infection, and our supervisors are constantly monitoring their staff to ensure compliance. At this point, our staff are
happy to show off their hand washing skills to their supervisors!
You may have heard about the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s (DPH) implementation of specific Infection Control inspections. These spot checks are scheduled to begin sometime in the next few weeks, and are designed to ensure compliance with all current Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and DPH Infection control regulations. Our team is looking forward to our first spot-check, and we are confident that we will pass these inspections with flying colors.
We are also working on implementation of a “tele-medicine” program. This program will involve the use of IPads, laptops, and other dual communication (audio and video) devices so that our Physicians and other medical specialists can check on our residents remotely. This program will allow the clinicians to visually see the residents, and to speak to them directly. This system, combined with the assessment skills of our nursing team will enable the physicians to make necessary adjustments to every patients plan of care, while limiting the number of people that are entering our building, thereby reducing the risk of someone unknowingly introducing the virus into South Cove. Our staff is currently working on obtaining signed consent forms from all residents and/or responsible parties, as part of our compliance efforts with this new program.
I also want to thank all family members, community leaders, and friends of South Cove that have been incredibly generous to us during these unprecedented times. Whether it be through the donation of much needed PPE, or financial donations, the community continues to provide for our residents and staff. We have utilized every dime of financial contributions towards thanking our staff for their dedication and diligence over the past 6 weeks. One of the highlights of those “Thank you’s” has been weekly meals for our staff prepared by our friends at Cathay Pacific. David Chu and his team have prepared an abundance of fantastic food for our staff in individual packaged containers for our team, and have been incredibly generous to us. Thank you, David!!
Finally, as we have done since the beginning of this pandemic, our Activity and nursing staff are utilizing iPads to coordinate Face Time and Skype calls between our residents and the outside world. If you would like to take advantage of this option, and haven’t been able to schedule an appointment, please reach out to Tammy Chen, our Activities Director. She can help coordinate this with you.
