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AMDA 2020 Meeting - COVID-19 Update From New York
Dr. Irene Hamrick attended the virtual presentations for the AMDA 2020 Meeting - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. The following is the recap of the presentation on COVID-19 from New York.
Prepare by:
- Trimming meds: supplements, statins, dementia meds, vitamins. Many of them can be held for 3 months, just remember to restart them.
- Clean out closets to reduce work when having to move patients
- Remove nail polish for pulse-ox
- Clear 4 rooms adjacent to each other for COVID-19
- Prepare isolation carts
- Increase capacity for biohazard waste
- Science is not good for medication treatment
Things that we are doing to prepare:
- Limiting visitor access. Only those hospice patients nearing the end of their life are allowed a limited number of visitors. Those visitors are only allowed in to visit after they are screened for a fever, cough, or other symptoms of COVID-19
- Recreation therapy does video calls with family
- All CLC staff have their temperature taken every time they enter the CLC and are asked about new symptoms of COVID-19. Staff members with fevers, new coughs, or other symptoms are sent home until symptom free
- All staff members are required to wear masks in the facility to decrease the possibility of spreading the virus
- We’ve reassigned some of our residents' providers to prevent physicians who are caring for patients in other facilities or the hospital from entering the nursing home and bringing the virus to our facility
- We’ve changed appointments to telehealth or postponed them altogether to prevent outside contact where patients could get the virus
- Anyone who may become sick with the virus is transitioned to a separate part of the CLC with dedicated nursing staff
- Obtained continuous pulse-ox, as patients with COVID-19 on oxygen may deteriorate quickly
- When we get more testing, we plan to test our staff regularly, as this is the only way our patients will get the virus
Additional Info
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