BOISE, Idaho — Many families with a loved one living in a long-term care facility are in a difficult situation.
Ada County is still operating under Stage 3 of Gov. Brad Little’s Idaho Rebounds plan. Under this stage, visitors are not allowed at long-term care facilities.
Linda Murphy is pushing for a chance to see her 92-year-old father, Emmett Voight. He’s a resident at the Good Samaritan Society-Boise Village nursing home.
Murphy has not been able to hug her father in more than five months. The last time she saw him in person was in March before the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Idaho.
At that time, Murphy's family was allowed to stand outside Voight's bedroom window and communicate with him that way. Once there was a confirmed COVID-19 case in the facility, he was moved into a different room.
Murphy and her family have not been able to see him since.
“The blame is not with the nursing home, it’s with the mandates they're being told to follow,” Murphy said. “Why is there no thinking outside the box for these elderly patients that need their families so bad?”
Good Samaritan is offering virtual visits with iPad’s. However, that option is not doable for Voight.
“He's very hard of hearing and can't really see very well so communicating with him has been very difficult,” Murphy said.
She wants to see him in person, but even with precautions in place, the facility cannot allow it.
“We've offered several options, we offered to quarantine under their conditions, we offered to get testing every time we went in, we offered to basically purchase hazmat suits or surgical gear to wear at our own expense just to get in there and touch him and hug him,” Murphy said.
Good Samaritan said no to all those options due to the mandates the facility has to follow.
Central District Health moved Ada County back to Stage 3 in late June after a rapid increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases. In this stage, CDH said it is too risky to allow family members to visit their loved ones inside.
As of August 21, there have been more than 1,800 confirmed COVID-19 cases in long-term care facilities and 172 deaths in 49 facilities, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
Voight's facility has had seven confirmed cases and no deaths.
“It’s unfortunate, but our nursing homes and our long-term care facilities are the ones hardest impacted with this particular illness,” CDH program manager Brandon Atkins said. “They can't predict what they're going to be bringing in with them. Even though a person may be wearing a mask into facilities, they still are trying to reduce the risk of coming in.”
Rachel Storm, the administrator for Good Samaritan Society, said the situation has been tough on everyone.
“If any of us put ourselves in their place, we could maybe have a little bit of a glimpse of how horrible it is for them,” she said. “They feel lonely, they feel vulnerable, because they know this disease is killing a lot of people in long-term care facilities.”
Storm told KTVB their facility has an area outside where residents can be on one side of a fence, and the family members can be on the other side. Social distancing and masks would be required.
She got to see a visit between a woman and her husband who hadn’t been able to see her in person since the pandemic started. That moment brought her to tears.
“They both immediately started crying, and it was just so emotionally overwhelming,” Storm said. “I think that’s really where I got a glimpse of how hard it is for our residents to go through this.”
However, she understands the danger COVID-19 poses to the residents inside the facility.
“I get the safety precautions, I understand that,” she said. “So we’re working to stay in compliance with the government mandate and the state requirement as well as keeping our residents safe.”
Murphy, however, wants CDH to think outside the box and come up with a way to allow family members to safely visit their loved ones inside long-term care facilities.
“The best-case scenario is for them to come up with a process where we can gown up or do something to make sure we kept other patients safe, but be allowed once a week to go in and hold our loved one, hug them and tell them we love them," she said.
Good Samaritan Society is offering window visits right now. Family members can see their loved one through a closed window and communicate with them that way.
The nursing home just asks people to call and schedule an appointment first.
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