The recent uprise in Covid-19 cases has caused some nursing home associations to express significant concern over allowing visitation at nursing home facilities. However, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that visitors will still be allowed to enter nursing home facilities. Nursing home associations such as the American Health Care Association, Leading Age, and AMDA were critical of the CMS’s stance on this issue as they do not want the health of nursing home residents and staff to be jeopardized.
The CMS stated that social distancing must continue during visitation. If visitors cannot adhere to the practice of social distancing, then nursing homes can have visitors enter at different times and put a cap on the number of visitors. The CMS is adamant that visitors be permitted to see their loved ones, and they even called on Congress to make sure family members “have rights” to visit nursing home facilities by legislating the Essential Caregivers Act, but nursing home association stress the need for this law to be clearly defined.
While nursing homes do have genuine concerns about taking measures to protect residents against the spread of Covid 19 and its associated variants, particularly in light of the heightened transmissibility of these new strains, it is encouraging that the federal government is issuing common-sense guidelines that balance the facilities’ concerns against the need for family members to continue to have vital in-person contact with their loved ones residing in nursing homes.
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Works Cited
Berklan, James. “BREAKING: CMS clarifies nursing homes may put some limits on visitors.” McKnights Long-Term Care News, 23 December 2021, https://www.mcknights.com/news/breaking-cms-clarifies-nursing-homes-may-put-some-limits-on visitors/.
