When the Biden administration announced a set of proposed nursing home reforms last month, consumer advocates were both pleased and puzzled. The reforms call for minimum staffing requirements, stronger regulatory oversight, and better public information about nursing home quality — measures advocates have promoted for years. Yet they don’t address residents’ rights to have contact with informal […]
This interview was first published February 17, 2022, in Patient Safety Beat, where it includes a brief video. Patient Safety Beat is the digital newsletter of the Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety. Tejal Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H., has been a leader in patient and workforce safety for more than 20 years. With experience as an internist, researcher, teacher and hospital executive, Dr. […]
Health care organizations have struggled to craft effective visitation or “family presence” policies since the first days of the pandemic, when most barred nearly all visitors. That was understandable at the time. Now, two years later, family presence is often still restricted, especially when hospitals are stretched beyond capacity. In a recent essay, Tejal Gandhi, […]
When a parent takes an infant to the Children’s Health Center in San Francisco for a routine checkup, a pediatrician will check the baby’s vitals and ask how the child is doing at home. Then Janelle Bercun, a licensed clinical social worker, who is also in the room, will look at Mom or Dad and […]
Editor’s note: This update on the current state of visitation restrictions in Massachusetts was first published May 26, 2021, in Patient Safety Beat, digital newsletter of the Betsy Lehman Center. Health care facilities in Massachusetts are beginning to ease a series of unprecedented visitation restrictions in place since early 2020. They are now taking stock […]
Visitation policies have been subject to tremendous change and debate during the pandemic. New guidelines from the Massachusetts Coalition for Serious Illness Care are designed to help organizations develop successful visitation policies for various care settings. As the Coalition indicates in the guidelines’ title – More than a Visitor: Balancing safety, connection and well-being at […]
The pandemic has resulted in widespread stress and sadness, extending now through spring, summer and into fall. Thankfully, there are also positive stories, often focused on innovative solutions to the challenges COVID-19 poses for patients, families and clinicians. One example is a program developed by a health system in Charlotte, North Carolina, to help counteract […]
Earlier this month, my husband picked up the phone and learned his 92-year-old father had been taken to the hospital that morning, feeling sick and short of breath. We were nearly 2,000 miles away, on a vacation in the mountains of southern Colorado. No, it wasn’t COVID-19. My father-in-law, Mel, who has diabetes, high blood […]
Editor’s Note: Judith Graham’s article (first published July 13, 2020, by Kaiser Health News) captures many important issues related to nursing home visitation policies adapted for COVID-19. I can report from personal experience that the socially distanced visits Graham describes, now available at many long-term care facilities, are an imperfect solution to a “heart-wrenching problem.” […]
When I asked Dad the reason for his call, he cheerfully responded, “Well, we’re trying to figure out how to get out of here.” The “we” is my 92-year-old dad and his fellow residents in a locked memory care unit where they’ve been very well cared for and almost entirely free of COVID-19 but without […]