6/22/2020
Dear Maristhill Residents and Families,
I am pleased to inform you that on Wednesday of last week we began to admit COVID-19 Negative residents to our Ames Unit which has been designated as our quarantine unit for new residents. The facility successfully achieved full “IN ADHERENCE” designation from the Department of Public Health for our infection control policies and procedures on June 9th. The facility developed and utilized detailed guidelines for admitting new residents to Maristhill. The guidelines we put into place called for the admittance of COVID-19 Negative residents only at this time. All of our working clinical staff had been tested and there are no staff members deemed to be COVID-19 Positive. Since last Wednesday we have admitted six COVID-19 Negative residents. All new residents are being monitored for COVID-19 symptoms every four hours daily during the quarantined period for fourteen (14) days. Any resident who wishes to remain long term care must go through this process before we can transfer them to our long term care units.
On June 1, 2020 the Department of Public Health issued a Memorandum to Long Term Care Facilities to allow outdoor visitation at the facility with specific guidance to be followed for the safety of the residents, family members, and staff. We are pleased to report that the visitation program has done well. Many of the residents and their families have benefited from these visits over the past few weeks. Currently, we will be providing 15 minute time slots for outdoor visits Monday through Friday, at the discretion of the Activities Department. We invite you to contact the Activities Department to schedule a time slot for your visit, but please keep in mind that we are still social distancing and no physical contact between the resident and their family members will be permitted. We will keep you updated to the status of these Department of Public Health guidelines as time goes on.
We ask that our residents and staff do all that they can to support our community by following the recommendations set forth by the CDC:
• Social Distancing/staying home if possible and wear a facemask in public;
• Washing Hands for 20 seconds with soap and water;
• Self-isolating if showing any signs or symptoms of COVID-19; and
• Seek medical assistance as necessary
We wish to remind you that we have updated our Maristhill website and we hope that this updated version will be helpful for the families to keep in contact with the activities and news from Maristhill. We can be followed on Facebook and Twitter as well. We had another Channel 5 news clip regarding the visitation program at Maristhill and hospitals in Massachusetts. Please visit us at www.Maristhill.org.
Thank you all for your support. We will provide updates regularly and we will continue to call daily those families that have COVID + loved ones. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Regards,
James Tracy
James Tracy,
President
