Update from Administrator – 5/1/2020
This pandemic has been an incredibly challenging time, and we continue to work every day to ensure that we provide the safest possible care for our residents. Our nursing home workers are saving the lives of patients every day by serving on the front lines and limiting the reach of this insidious virus. The coronavirus pandemic has hit nursing homes at a disproportionately higher rate than the greater community.
Recent independent state inspections have consistently found our facility fully in compliance on issues of infection prevention and PPE. In Connecticut, over 65% of nursing homes have residents and employees who have tested positive for COVID-19. We continue to have residents, once they test positive move to our COVID positive unit on Willow B. Our Magnolia C unit has accepted negative COVID-19 admissions from Northbridge Health Care Center, our sister facility that has been designated as a COVID-19 positive facility for accepting surge of non-critical positive COVID-19 admissions from the hospitals.
We are in touch daily with the Department of Public Health and our local Health Department. Today, April 29, 2020, we had the CT Department of Public Health and CDC tour Shady Knoll Health Center to review practices, PPE, and scheduling. We continue to do all we can to protect our residents; we provide appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) and follow CDC and state guidelines regarding the appropriate use of PPE. We have received donations of PPE from the community and we are grateful for this support.
I am incredibly grateful for our dedicated nursing home team and ask you to join me in ensuring that they are included as “Health Care Heroes” battling COVID-19. They are doing everything they possibly can to care for those suffering and support them as they battle this disease. We have increased compensation to our employees and continue to advertise and recruit for additional per diem staff to supplement our teams. We support our talented staff whose commitment to caring for our residents throughout this health crisis inspires us every day.
Let us review our procedures for laundry, gifts/deliveries/family communications:
- we continue to exchange laundry with family members and residents on a limited basis. We encourage our residents’ laundry to be cleaned in house.
- gifts/deliveries; we understand the desire to provide to your family member favorite snacks, toiletries, and personal items. Please remember, we do not deliver packages for 48 hours upon receipt at Shady Knoll. We have developed a dating/delivery system that should address any issues going forward. We do ask for food from commercial kitchens (i.e. no home-baked items).
- communication; with the generous donation of 3 Kindles, our Recreation Department has been extremely busy with Facetime and Skype visits. We ask for your patience in scheduling a visit; we will be scheduling visits in 3 day units at the end of each work day. Unfortunately we do not have the ability to be spontaneous with video calls.
- please continue to utilize our Social Services department to address any issues; Kate and Nicole will follow up with all concerns usually within 24 hours.
Our commitment is to be as transparent as possible and work to address any issues that arise. This is an incredibly challenging time and we will continue to do all we can to get through this, together.
Thank you and please stay safe and healthy!
Deborah S. Torrey
Administrator