Connecticut health officials and long-term care leaders are encouraging providers to adopt visitor COVID-19 testing policies in order to prevent outbreaks at facilities.
Deidre Gifford, Connecticut’s acting public health commissioner, earlier this month recommended that providers develop mandates for visitor testing in a memo to nursing homes in parts of the state where increases in coronavirus cases were being reported, the CT Mirror reported.
The decision to do so is being left up to the facilities, but the state suggested that type of policy could include having visitors submit to rapid testing at the door or requiring them to show proof of testing from their primary care doctor or a local clinic.
“With community spread on the rise, there are increasingly inherent and elevated risks regarding indoor visitation,” explained Matthew Barrett, president and CEO of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities.
“As much as we support it … with the recent outbreaks and the very clear evidence of increased community spread across Connecticut, we think a visitor testing policy is essential to prevent further spread,” he told the news agency.
One provider, the Beechwood Post-Acute & Transitional Care Center, a 60-bed skilled nursing facility in New London, CT, adopted its own policy after cases increased in its surrounding community this month.
The provider requires visitors to present a negative COVID-19 test result to staff before seeing one of their residents, and the test has to have been done 72 hours prior to the visit.
“I wanted to make sure we’re doing everything we can,” owner Bill White said. “We’re trying to show our community that we are really being cautious.”
In mid-September, the federal government updated its guidance for nursing home visitation during the COVID-19 pandemic which created a framework for providers to facilitate in-home visitation. Health officials warned that facilities could face citation or other penalties if they failed to do so without good cause.
