Reopening of long-term care facilities is ‘an absolute necessity for our well-being’
For nearly a year, nursing homes and assisted living centers have been mostly closed to visitors. Now, it s time for them to open back up and relieve residents of crushing isolation, according to a growing chorus of long-term care experts, caregivers, consumer groups and physicians.
They re calling for federal health authorities to relax visitation restrictions in long-term care institutions, replacing guidance that s been in place since September. And they want both federal and state authorities to grant special status to essential caregivers family members or friends who provide critically important hands-on care so they have the opportunity to tend to relatives in need.
Reopening Long-Term Care Facilities âan Absolute Necessity
By Judith Graham
Thursday, March 04, 2021 (Kaiser News) For nearly a year, nursing homes and assisted living centers have been mostly closed to visitors. Now, itâs time for them to open back up and relieve residents of crushing isolation, according to a growing chorus of long-term care experts, caregivers, consumer groups and physicians. This story also ran on CNN. It can be republished for free.
Theyâre calling for federal health authorities to relax visitation restrictions in long-term care institutions, replacing guidance thatâs been in place since September. And they want both federal and state authorities to grant special status to âessential caregiversâ â family members or friends who provide critically important hands-on care â so they have the opportunity to tend to relatives in need.
February 10, 2021
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David K. Gibson
One year ago February 11, 2020 the Institute’s Health, Medicine and Society program brought together three experts for a panel called “Straight from the Source: Experts Discuss Novel Coronavirus.”
The disease that has since wracked the world had only been officially named COVID-19 earlier that morning. At that point, it had claimed more than a thousand victims in two dozen countries. Epidemiologists were clear-eyed about the contagion’s pandemic potential, among them the three experts on stage that day: Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Ron Klain, former White House Ebola Response Coordinator under the Obama administration and now President Biden’s chief of staff; and Anthony Fauci before he became a household name.