Dear Families,

As you may be aware, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a revision to their directive on Nursing Home Visitation. In this directive, they have outlined various scenarios regarding visitation recognizing the toll that physical separation from family and loved ones has taken over the course of the past year.

 

They continue to define visits as ‘Indoor, Outdoor, Compassionate Care and End-of-Life’ with Outdoor visitation being preferred ‘even when the resident and visitor are fully vaccinated’. Regardless of how visits are conducted, the Core Principles of Infection Prevention must be observed to reduce the risk of Covid-19 transmission (Screening of all visitors, Hand Hygiene, Masks, Social Distancing, and Sanitizing)

 

Attached, you will find Pickering Manor’s revised Visitation Policy. In creating this policy, our team made every effort to use the CMS directive as guidelines in its development. We have also worked with our colleagues in the area who are developing their own policies to insure that we are providing the residents and their families the greatest opportunities to reunite safely.

 

Please read the policy closely; we tried to anticipate any questions you might have and it contains a lot of information.

 

We have also included a second attachment titled the ‘Visitation Information Sheet. We created this guide as a means for you to more clearly understand what is permissible with each type of visit. As you can see, physical contact is allowed for all visits (if the resident has been vaccinated) but masks MUST be worn by both parties during these visits as per the CMS guidelines. This continues to mean that for now, we cannot allow food/drink to be shared during the visits since this would require the masks to be removed.  Visitation Times are as follows: 7 days/week; 10:00-12:00pm and 2:00- 4:30pm.

 

This Visitation Policy will go into effect Monday, 3/29. At that time, you may contact the facility to set up appointments for visits with Activities, Social Services, or the Volunteer Coordinator. In order to accommodate family visits for all residents, we request that you limit your visits to a maximum of 2x/week. Should there be an overflow of visitors, we reserve the right to adjust the schedule based on the demand and will notify you in a timely manner. 

There has yet to be no guidance on leaving the facility with family members. I am confident that these directives will continue to evolve as Positivity Rates decline and more of the population becomes vaccinated. Unfortunately, the Bucks County Positivity Rate has grown from 7.5% to 9.2% in the past week. It was trending downward. It is up to all of us to continue to do our part in containing the spread of this virus; for in doing that, we will all benefit!

 

We are here to answer questions should you have them and we look forward to welcoming you ‘home’ to your loved ones!