Keith Hare’s Op/Ed on What LTC Facilities Need to
Fight COVID-19
The following column ran in the May 10 edition of the
Richmond Times-Dispatch
. Please share on your social media channels.
Long term care facilities are filled with love and dedication. Here's what else we need.
By Keith Hare, Melissa Andrews and Judy Hackler
112. In today’s news reports, if you saw the number 112 and the words long term care or nursing home in the same headline, you might make the leap that it’s a count of seniors stricken with COVID-19, or worse yet, a death toll.
However, 112 means something much more to Avicia Thorpe, a Virginia nursing home resident. It’s the milestone birthday she hit this month. Her caregivers helped throw a Zoom party for her and arranged for the local police, fire and rescue squads to sing “Happy Birthday” from outside.
Each day, journalists share heartbreaking scenes in nursing homes and assisted living communities as the coronavirus spreads. We will never get used to seeing families conversing through windows with relatives who are unable to receive visitors during this time, or the idea of final farewells exchanged via FaceTime.
Each COVID-19 case and each elder included in statistics on the Virginia Department of Health website represents a treasured person. Victims of this insidious virus were husbands and wives, veterans, teachers, church choir members and avid sports fans. They were beloved family patriarchs or matriarchs who nurtured children and grandchildren. Tragically, their age and underlying health conditions also made them more susceptible to contract COVID-19 and to develop serious — sometimes deadly — complications.
We grieve for every individual who has succumbed to this deadly virus, but especially for long term care residents.
So do the dedicated caregivers who work inside Virginia’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities. These nurses, aides, housekeepers, cooks and others don’t appear on camera or in newspapers. But they are heartbroken. They grieve every time this virus takes away someone whom they have served, and to whom they have grown close, over many years.
These caregivers come to work every day, when staying at home would be so much safer. They put their lives and families at risk because they love their work. They feel called to help residents so they can continue living meaningful lives long after this pandemic becomes a distant memory.
Knowing their dedication, it is disappointing to see some place blame on America’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities for deaths from the coronavirus. That blame is misplaced and unfair.
There are many reasons why COVID-19 spreads so quickly within nursing homes. By design, these care settings are home to a concentration of older adults with serious underlying health conditions who live in a communal environment and require hands-on assistance with basic daily living activities like dressing and bathing. Although assisted living communities are not medical facilities and serve seniors who don’t require continuous nursing care, their residents do receive daily personal and health care services.
This combination of factors helps the coronavirus spread and makes the virus extremely challenging to control, even for facilities that have honed their infection-control and prevention protocols.
As long term care providers, we face additional challenges that are out of our control:
- We need more personal protective equipment (PPE) — including masks, gowns and gloves — to keep caregivers and residents safe;
- We need more critical testing tools to help identify and isolate staff and residents who have been exposed to the virus;
- We need more government funding to cover the true cost of the care we provide;
- We need more understanding and support.
While we are grateful for the creation of the COVID-19 Long Term Care Task Force and a $20 per patient per day increase in funding for nursing facility care provided by Gov. Ralph Northam and the General Assembly, our resource needs at nursing facilities still are significant.
Since Virginia’s Medicaid program does not cover assisted living care, those residents and providers are left to bear the costs of battling COVID-19 on their own. Having the necessary PPE to keep residents and staff safe, as well as access to testing to quickly identify and respond to cases, will enable us to save lives. Despite these challenges, residents and staff members are recovering, and it is our hope we can do more.
This crisis is not going away soon. Federal, state and local governments must continue to take aggressive actions to work with long term care providers to protect and care for residents and patients. Our vulnerable residents and caregivers on the front lines deserve no less.
It’s time to think beyond the statistics. It’s time to rally around our vulnerable residents and provide our long term caregivers all the support they need to stop the spread of COVID-19.
(Melissa Andrews is president and CEO of LeadingAge Virginia. Judy Hackler is executive director of the Virginia Assisted Living Association.)