khn.org Open in urlscan Pro
2a04:fa87:fffd::c000:4250  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

/

<form action="/" class="header-site--search">
  <input class="form-control header-site--form-control" name="s" placeholder="Search" type="text">
  <button class="icon-search" type="submit"></button>
</form>

POST /email-signup/

<form action="/email-signup/" class="kaiser-hubspot-mini-signup-form" method="post">
  <input type="hidden" id="kaiser_hubspot_nonce" name="kaiser_hubspot_nonce" value="648a60d1ea"><input type="hidden" name="_wp_http_referer"
    value="/news/article/new-laws-let-visitors-see-loved-ones-in-health-care-facilities-even-in-an-outbreak/?utm_campaign=KFF-2022-The-Latest&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsmi=209473871&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8SaX-GDebHM71tBfxnVNC28DjlLUELGG5lrjOF8LsED1rhQCljv7MAJW2lTqKsU4sF7IsOAIYEVadYVfT8xLQR6U5U4F49ArjZn-yKXdEJmqyum2w&amp;utm_content=209473871&amp;utm_source=hs_email">
  <label class="kaiser-hubspot-mini-signup-form__label--email" for="kaiser-hubspot-mini-signup-form-email">
    <span class="screen-reader-text"> Your Email Address </span>
    <input autocomplete="email" class="kaiser-hubspot-mini-signup-form__input--email" id="kaiser-hubspot-mini-signup-form-email" name="kaiser_hubspot_email" type="email" placeholder="Your email address">
  </label>
  <button class="kaiser-hubspot-mini-signup-form__submit"> Sign Up </button>
</form>

Text Content

This website stores cookies on your computer to collect information about how
you interact with our website. We use this information in order to improve and
customize your browsing experience and for analytics and metrics about our
visitors both on this website and other media. To find out more about the
cookies we use, see our Privacy Policy.

Accept
New Laws Let Visitors See Loved Ones in Health Care Facilities, Even in an
Outbreak
Donate
 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * LinkedIn
 * Print
 * Republish This Story

Toggle navigation Contact Us
 * Donate
 * Connect With Us:
 * Contact
 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * LinkedIn
 * Instagram
 * RSS

 * COVID-19
 * Vaccines
 * Race & Health
 * Investigations
   * Bill Of The Month
   * The Spinal Tap
   * Lost On The Frontline
   * Underfunded And Under Threat
   * UVA Lawsuits
   * Pharma Cash To Congress
   * ALL KHN INVESTIGATIONS
 * More Topics
   * Aging
   * Medicaid
   * Medicare
   * Health Care Costs
   * Insurance
   * Mental Health
   * Pharma
   * Public Health
   * Uninsured
 * Podcasts
   * What the Health
   * American Diagnosis
   * An Arm and a Leg
   * Where It Hurts


COVID-19


NEW LAWS LET VISITORS SEE LOVED ONES IN HEALTH CARE FACILITIES, EVEN IN AN
OUTBREAK

By Stephanie Colombini, WUSF April 8, 2022

Republish This Story


Jean White (back right) moved her mother into a memory care facility near Tampa,
Florida, after her dementia advanced early in 2020. As covid cases surged,
lockdowns were common, and it was months before White was allowed to visit her
mother in person. Now, some states have passed new laws to guarantee families
the right to get inside health care facilities — even in a pandemic. (Kimberly
Cock)

Jean White’s mother has dementia and moved into a memory care facility near
Tampa, Florida, just as coronavirus lockdowns began in spring 2020. For months,
the family wasn’t allowed to go inside to visit.

This story is part of a partnership that includes WUSF, NPR and KHN. It can be
republished for free.

They tried video chats and visits from outside her bedroom window, but White
said that just upset her mom, who is 87. White’s mother couldn’t grasp why she
could hear familiar voices but not be with her loved ones in person.

When the family was allowed in, disruptions continued. White said the facility
shut down whenever a resident or staff member had the virus.

All the while, her mom’s memory was deteriorating.

Restrictions on visitation eventually relaxed, White said, but she questions
whether protecting her mom from covid-19 was worth the lengthy separation. “What
anxiety, loneliness, and confusion she must have had — I think I would have
rather her seen her family,” she said.



Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill April 6 that will make it easier for
people like White to see their loved ones in health care facilities. Before
Florida, at least eight states had passed similar laws, and several others have
bills under consideration.

Some laws, like those passed last year in New York, Texas, and Washington state,
are specific to long-term care facilities. They allow residents to designate
essential caregivers, also known as compassionate caregivers, who are allowed to
visit regardless of whether there is a health crisis. Texans also added
protections in their constitution.

Other states — including Arkansas, North Carolina, and Oklahoma — passed similar
“No Patient Left Alone” laws that guarantee visitor access to patients in
hospitals.

EMAIL SIGN-UP

Subscribe to KHN's free Morning Briefing.

Your Email Address Sign Up

Hospitals and long-term care facilities set pandemic restrictions on visitors to
protect patients and staffers from infection. But supporters of these new laws
said they want to ease the restrictions because the rules may have harmed
patients.

An Associated Press investigation found that for every two residents in
long-term care who died from covid-19, another resident died prematurely of
other causes. The report, published in late 2020, attributed some of those
deaths to neglect. Other deaths, listed on death certificates as “failure to
thrive,” were tied to despair.

Even in regions of the U.S. with low rates of covid, the risk of death for
nursing home residents with dementia was 14% higher in 2020 than in 2019,
according to a study published in February in JAMA Neurology.

The researchers pointed to factors besides covid infection that may have
contributed to the increased mortality, such as reduced access to in-person
medical care and community support services and “the negative effects of social
isolation and loneliness.”

Woman Took a Job at Facility to Be Near Her Husband

When long-term care facilities and hospitals began closing their doors to family
visitors, patient advocate Mary Daniel of Jacksonville, Florida, was worried
about what might happen to her husband, Steve, who has Alzheimer’s disease. “I
promised him when he was diagnosed that I would be by his side every step of the
way, and for 114 days I was not able to do that,” Daniel said.

To get back inside, Daniel took a dishwashing job at her husband’s assisted
living facility so she could see him. Daniel worked in the kitchen two nights a
week and went to his room after her shift. She helped him change into his
pajamas and lay beside him watching TV until he fell asleep. “That is really why
I’m there, to be his wife, to hold his hand, so he feels that love,” Daniel
said.

Daniel has been fighting for visitor rights at the state and federal levels ever
since. She’s a leader of Caregivers for Compromise, a coalition with thousands
of members. She also served on a state task force that informed Florida’s
decision to order long-term care facilities to reopen to families in fall 2020.

“We understand that covid kills, but we want to be sure everyone understands
isolation kills, too,” Daniel said.

The visitation laws also include provisions to protect patients and staffers by
directing facilities to establish infection-control measures that families must
follow to enter. That could mean mask requirements or health screenings. In
Florida, protocols for visitors cannot be more stringent than they are for staff
members, and vaccination status can’t be a factor.

Also in Florida, facilities can ban visitors who don’t follow the rules. That’s
fine with advocates like Daniel. “I mean we’re not here beating down the door
saying, ‘You can never kick us out, and I’m going to be here as long as I want
to,'” she said. “We want to be sure that everything is safe.”

DeSantis, who appointed Daniel to the 2020 task force, was a vocal supporter of
expanding visitor access. “Covid cannot be used as an excuse to deny patients
basic rights, and one of the rights of being a patient, I think, is having your
loved ones present,” DeSantis said at a news conference in February.

Balancing the Joy of Visits With the Risks of Infection

In November, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services directed nursing homes
to open their doors to visitors even amid covid-19 outbreaks, so long as they
screen visitors to determine whether they have tested positive or have symptoms
of covid-19.

Hospitals and assisted living facilities are not regulated in the same way as
nursing homes. Some health care industry leaders fear the new laws for hospitals
and assisted living facilities won’t provide operators the flexibility they need
to respond to crises.

Veronica Catoe, CEO of the Florida Assisted Living Association, represents
facilities with varying capabilities to accommodate visitation. Some are large
with private rooms and multiple common areas; others are single-family homes
that just have a handful of residents.

“These operators are trying to protect not only the loved one that wants a
visit, but also the loved one that doesn’t want these outsiders coming in. They
both have resident rights,” Catoe said.

Florida’s law outlines various scenarios during which visitation must be allowed
at all times. Those include if a patient is dying, struggling to transition to
the new environment, or experiencing emotional distress, among other factors.

Catoe said those situations aren’t always easy to define. “Is it the facility
that makes that decision, is it the family that makes that decision, or is it
the resident?” she asked. “And when they’re in conflict, who gets the deciding
factor?”

Relatives Wanted More Time With a Dying Loved One

Mary Mayhew, president of the Florida Hospital Association, said the decision is
also difficult for medical centers. “They are extremely reluctant to place
restrictions on [visitor] access, and it has largely been done during this
extremely unusual time period when we have had a virus — continue to have a
virus — that we are often learning something new about every day,” Mayhew said.
She added that people go to hospitals because they’re already sick or injured,
which makes them vulnerable to infection.

She said families are vital to patient care and stressed that even during covid
surges and lockdown, hospitals have tried to get relatives in to visit,
especially when patients were dying.

Kevin Rzeszut said his family needed more.

In August, when Tampa hospitals were overwhelmed with patients sick with the
delta variant, Rzeszut’s father died from a bacterial infection at age 75. “By
the time we saw him, I mean, he was gone,” Rzeszut said. “There was no
consciousness left; he was on so many medications.”

He couldn’t visit his dad for nearly two weeks, he said.

He said the staff did the best they could. “The nurses and doctors, they can
look at notes all day long, but they don’t know him,” Rzeszut said. Rzeszut’s
mother spent 53 years with his father, Rzeszut said, and “she’d be more attuned
to minor improvements or degradations. Maybe that’s a pipe dream, but it feels
real.”

Rzeszut said he supports measures to give families more access to their loved
ones, so long as enforcing them doesn’t add more workload to an “already
overburdened” health care system. What he really wishes, he said, is that more
people would take covid seriously so people didn’t need a law to visit their
loved ones.

This story is part of a partnership that includes NPR, WUSF, and KHN.




RELATED TOPICS

 * Multimedia
 * Public Health
 * States
 * Arkansas
 * Audio
 * COVID-19
 * Florida
 * Hospice
 * Hospitals
 * Legislation
 * Long-Term Care
 * North Carolina
 * Nursing Homes
 * Oklahoma

Contact Us Submit a Story Tip

Share This Story:

 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * LinkedIn
 * Print
 * Republish This Story

We want to hear from you: Contact Us

Republish This Story

×


COPY AND PASTE TO REPUBLISH THIS STORY


NEW LAWS LET VISITORS SEE LOVED ONES IN HEALTH CARE FACILITIES, EVEN IN AN
OUTBREAK

By Stephanie Colombini, WUSF April 8, 2022

<h1>New Laws Let Visitors See Loved Ones in Health Care Facilities, Even in an
Outbreak</h1> <span class="byline">Stephanie Colombini, WUSF</span> <p>Jean
White’s mother has dementia and moved into a memory care facility near Tampa,
Florida, just as coronavirus lockdowns began in spring 2020. For months, the
family wasn’t allowed to go inside to visit.</p> <p>They tried video chats and
visits from outside her bedroom window, but White said that just upset her mom,
who is 87. White’s mother couldn’t grasp why she could hear familiar voices but
not be with her loved ones in person.</p> <p>When the family was allowed in,
disruptions continued. White said the facility shut down whenever a resident or
staff member had the virus.</p> <p>All the while, her mom’s memory was
deteriorating.</p> <p>Restrictions on visitation eventually relaxed, White said,
but she questions whether protecting her mom from covid-19 was worth the lengthy
separation. “What anxiety, loneliness, and confusion she must have had — I think
I would have rather her seen her family,” she said.</p> <p>Florida Gov. Ron
DeSantis <a
href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/988/BillText/er/PDF">signed a
bill</a> April 6 that will make it easier for people like White to see their
loved ones in health care facilities. Before Florida, at least eight states had
passed similar laws, and several others have bills under consideration.</p>
<p>Some laws, like those passed last year in New York, Texas, and Washington
state, are specific to long-term care facilities. They allow residents to
designate essential caregivers, also known as compassionate caregivers, who are
allowed to visit regardless of whether there is a health crisis. Texans also
added protections in their constitution.</p> <p>Other states — including
Arkansas, North Carolina, and Oklahoma — passed similar “No Patient Left Alone”
laws that guarantee visitor access to patients in hospitals.</p> <p>Hospitals
and long-term care facilities set pandemic restrictions on visitors to protect
patients and staffers from infection. But supporters of these new laws said they
want to ease the restrictions because the rules may have harmed patients.</p>
<p>An Associated Press investigation found that for every two residents in
long-term care who died from covid-19, another resident died prematurely of
other causes. <a
href="https://apnews.com/article/nursing-homes-neglect-death-surge-3b74a2202140c5a6b5cf05cdf0ea4f32">The
report, published in late 2020</a>, attributed some of those deaths to neglect.
Other deaths, listed on death certificates as “failure to thrive,” were tied to
despair.</p> <p>Even in regions of the U.S. with low rates of covid, the risk of
death for nursing home residents with dementia was 14% higher in 2020 than in
2019, according to a study published in February in <a
href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2789614">JAMA
Neurology</a>.</p> <p>The researchers pointed to factors besides covid infection
that may have contributed to the increased mortality, such as reduced access to
in-person medical care and community support services and “the negative effects
of social isolation and loneliness.”</p> <p><strong>Woman Took a Job at Facility
to Be Near Her Husband</strong></p> <p>When long-term care facilities and
hospitals began closing their doors to family visitors, patient advocate Mary
Daniel of Jacksonville, Florida, was worried about what might happen to her
husband, Steve, who has Alzheimer’s disease. “I promised him when he was
diagnosed that I would be by his side every step of the way, and for 114 days I
was not able to do that,” Daniel said.</p> <p>To get back inside, Daniel took <a
href="https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2020-08-06/were-desperate-families-of-nursing-home-residents-demand-visitation-in-florida">a
dishwashing job</a> at her husband’s assisted living facility so she could see
him. Daniel worked in the kitchen two nights a week and went to his room after
her shift. She helped him change into his pajamas and lay beside him watching TV
until he fell asleep. “That is really why I’m there, to be his wife, to hold his
hand, so he feels that love,” Daniel said.</p> <p>Daniel has been fighting for
visitor rights at the state and federal levels ever since. She’s a leader of <a
href="https://caregivers4compromise.com/">Caregivers for Compromise</a>, a
coalition with thousands of members. She also served on a state task force that
informed Florida’s decision to order long-term care facilities to reopen to
families in fall 2020.</p> <p>“We understand that covid kills, but we want to be
sure everyone understands isolation kills, too,” Daniel said.</p> <p>The
visitation laws also include provisions to protect patients and staffers by
directing facilities to establish infection-control measures that families must
follow to enter. That could mean mask requirements or health screenings. In
Florida, protocols for visitors cannot be more stringent than they are for staff
members, and vaccination status can’t be a factor.</p> <p>Also in Florida,
facilities can ban visitors who don’t follow the rules. That’s fine with
advocates like Daniel. “I mean we’re not here beating down the door saying, ‘You
can never kick us out, and I’m going to be here as long as I want to,'” she
said. “We want to be sure that everything is safe.”</p> <p>DeSantis, who
appointed Daniel to the 2020 task force, was a vocal supporter of expanding
visitor access. “Covid cannot be used as an excuse to deny patients basic
rights, and one of the rights of being a patient, I think, is having your loved
ones present,” DeSantis said at a news conference in February.</p>
<p><strong>Balancing the Joy of Visits With the Risks of Infection</strong></p>
<p>In November, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services <a
href="https://www.cms.gov/files/document/qso-20-39-nh-revised.pdf">directed
nursing homes</a> to open their doors to visitors even amid covid-19 outbreaks,
so long as they screen visitors to determine whether they have tested positive
or have symptoms of covid-19.</p> <p>Hospitals and assisted living facilities
are not regulated in the same way as nursing homes. Some health care industry
leaders fear the new laws for hospitals and assisted living facilities won’t
provide operators the flexibility they need to respond to crises.</p>
<p>Veronica Catoe, CEO of the Florida Assisted Living Association, represents
facilities with varying capabilities to accommodate visitation. Some are large
with private rooms and multiple common areas; others are single-family homes
that just have a handful of residents.</p> <p>“These operators are trying to
protect not only the loved one that wants a visit, but also the loved one that
doesn’t want these outsiders coming in. They both have resident rights,” Catoe
said.</p> <p>Florida’s law outlines various scenarios during which visitation
must be allowed at all times. Those include if a patient is dying, struggling to
transition to the new environment, or experiencing emotional distress, among
other factors.</p> <p>Catoe said those situations aren’t always easy to define.
“Is it the facility that makes that decision, is it the family that makes that
decision, or is it the resident?” she asked. “And when they’re in conflict, who
gets the deciding factor?”</p> <p><strong>Relatives Wanted More Time With a
Dying Loved One</strong></p> <p>Mary Mayhew, president of the Florida Hospital
Association, said the decision is also difficult for medical centers. “They are
extremely reluctant to place restrictions on [visitor] access, and it has
largely been done during this extremely unusual time period when we have had a
virus — continue to have a virus — that we are often learning something new
about every day,” Mayhew said. She added that people go to hospitals because
they’re already sick or injured, which makes them vulnerable to infection.</p>
<p>She said families are vital to patient care and stressed that even during
covid surges and lockdown, hospitals have tried to get relatives in to visit,
especially when patients were dying.</p> <p>Kevin Rzeszut said his family needed
more.</p> <p>In August, when Tampa hospitals were overwhelmed with patients sick
with the delta variant, Rzeszut’s father died from a bacterial infection at age
75. “By the time we saw him, I mean, he was gone,” Rzeszut said. “There was no
consciousness left; he was on so many medications.”</p> <p>He couldn’t visit his
dad for nearly two weeks, he said.</p> <p>He said the staff did the best they
could. “The nurses and doctors, they can look at notes all day long, but they
don’t know him,” Rzeszut said. Rzeszut’s mother spent 53 years with his father,
Rzeszut said, and “she’d be more attuned to minor improvements or degradations.
Maybe that’s a pipe dream, but it feels real.”</p> <p>Rzeszut said he supports
measures to give families more access to their loved ones, so long as enforcing
them doesn’t add more workload to an “already overburdened” health care system.
What he really wishes, he said, is that more people would take covid seriously
so people didn’t need a law to visit their loved ones.</p> <p><em><em>This story
is part of a partnership that includes</em> </em><a
href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/04/03/1086216581/visiting-patients-during-covid"><em>NPR</em></a><em>,
</em><a
href="https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/2022-04-03/new-laws-let-visitors-see-loved-ones-in-health-care-facilities-even-in-an-outbreak"><em>WUSF</em></a><em>,
and KHN.</em></p> Copy HTML

We encourage organizations to republish our content, free of charge. Here’s what
we ask:

You must credit us as the original publisher, with a hyperlink to our khn.org
site. If possible, please include the original author(s) and “Kaiser Health
News” in the byline. Please preserve the hyperlinks in the story.

It’s important to note, not everything on khn.org is available for republishing.
If a story is labeled “All Rights Reserved,” we cannot grant permission to
republish that item.

Have questions? Let us know at KHNHelp@kff.org


MORE FROM KHN

California Handed Its Medicaid Drug Program to One Company. Then Came a
Corporate Takeover.

New Laws Let Visitors See Loved Ones in Health Care Facilities, Even in an
Outbreak

A Shortfall of ECMO Treatment Cost Lives During the Delta Surge

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Finally, a Fix for the ‘Family Glitch’

© 2022 Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

 * About Us
 * Donate
 * Contact Us
 * Editorial Policy
 * Privacy Policy
 * Staff
 * Republish Our Content
 * Email Sign-Up

 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * LinkedIn
 * Instagram
 * RSS

Powered by WordPress VIP

×

Thank you for your interest in supporting Kaiser Health News (KHN), the nation’s
leading nonprofit newsroom focused on health and health policy. We distribute
our journalism for free and without advertising through media partners of all
sizes and in communities large and small. We appreciate all forms of engagement
from our readers and listeners, and welcome your support.

KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). You
can support KHN by making a contribution to KFF, a non-profit charitable
organization that is not associated with Kaiser Permanente.

Click the button below to go to KFF’s donation page which will provide more
information and FAQs. Thank you!

Go Back Continue

Notifications