Reopening of long-term care facilities is ‘an absolute necessity for our

For nearly a year, nursing homes and assisted living centers have been mostly closed to visitors. Now, it’s time for them to open back up and relieve residents of crushing isolation, according to a growing chorus of long-term care experts, caregivers, consumer groups and physicians.

They’re calling for federal health authorities to relax visitation restrictions in long-term care institutions, replacing guidance that’s been in place since September. And they want both federal and state authorities to grant special status to “essential caregivers” — family members or friends who provide critically important hands-on care — so they have the opportunity to tend to relatives in need.

Richard Fornili, 84, who lives in a nursing home in St. Marys, Georgia, supports a change in policies. He hasn’t seen any family members since last summer, when a granddaughter, her husband and her two children stood outside his window and called him on the phone. “The depression and sense of aloneness affecting my fellow residents, it’s terrible,” he said. “Having our relatives come back in to see us, it’s an absolute necessity for our well-being.”

“At this point, residents are becoming more likely to die of isolation and neglect than covid,” said Jocelyn Bogdan, program and policy specialist at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, citing new data linking covid-19 vaccination to sharp declines in covid-related deaths. Her organization has launched a petition drive calling for nursing homes to safely reopen and for essential caregivers to have unrestricted access to loved ones.

Since late December, when vaccinations began, covid cases in nursing home residents have plunged 83%, while deaths have dropped by 66%, according to an analysis by KFF. As of Monday, 4.6 million residents and staff members in nursing homes and other congregate facilities had received at least one shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, including more than 2 million who had received a second dose.

Vaccines have “changed everything” and nursing homes are now among “the safest places you can be in your community in terms of covid,” said Ruth Katz, senior vice president of public policy at LeadingAge, an association representing more than 5,000 nonprofit nursing homes, assisted living centers and senior housing providers.

Last week, LeadingAge called for federal authorities to expand visitation in a letter to top officials at the White House, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an email, the American Health Care Association, which represents more than 14,000 long-term care providers, also urged CMS and the CDC to review its visitation guidance. AARP, the nation’s most powerful seniors’ lobby, chimed in with a letter noting “a critical need” for new recommendations.

Medical directors at long-term care facilities are also weighing in while sounding a cautious note in new guidance about resuming communal activities and visitation in long-term care facilities. With new covid variants circulating and significant numbers of staffers and potential visitors still unvaccinated, “we’re…