Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dane Rank, who is the administrator at the Thompson House Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Brattleboro.
An unprecedented crisis such as the coronavirus pandemic brings out the best in us and focuses our attention on where we need to improve. This is certainly true at Thompson House. Since the crisis began, we have seen sacrifices made by the good people working in long-term care facilities. Our dedicated caregivers and staff travel from home to work to home. Self-isolation has meant, for them, not seeing grandchildren, mothers and fathers for months. At the same time it pains all of us to see our residents, chin up, as the most important thing in the world is taken from them: Personal time with family and close friends. Through it all, health care workers in this tight Vermont community remain positive and sing and dance and worship to keep the activity programs alive as we take up the additional duties of keeping spirits up in place of our volunteers and performers who have been banned from these facilities. We look to our south as this virus wipes out a third of facilities’ populations when it gets in, and we pray. The board and I are enormously proud of what these efforts show about what is best in our community in a crisis.
Unfortunately, the Covid-19 illness has claimed the lives of far too many residents in Vermont’s long-term care facilities. Half of all the Covid-19-related deaths in Vermont occurred in skilled nursing or assisted living residences. In all of these cases, a staff member in those facilities tested positive for Covid-19. Many centers, including Thompson House, began implementing rigorous infection control procedures even before requirements began rolling out in health alert notices. Working with the dedicated leadership at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, we have found Commissioner Mark Levine to be receptive and understanding of the quickly evolving situation in Vermont’s nursing homes.
The health alert notice on April 10 changing resident testing policies has no doubt “flattened the curve” of new cases for facilities. However, the lack of universal access to testing for employees and residents of long-term care facilities, means that we are flying blind because individuals (residents or staff) can be infected without being symptomatic for as long as 14 days. As the availability of tests increases, this should be the priority.
The standard of patient care maintained by Thompson House and the other 36 nursing homes throughout Vermont would not be possible without the dedicated staff who are, at this time, truly “health care heroes” for persevering through this crisis. As they sacrifice so much to take care of our grandmothers and grandfathers, it is upon us to support them by testing to ensure their safety, and the lives of Vermont’s elders.
We clearly can and should do better!
Please call or write to Gov. Phil Scott or your local representative and urge them to take immediate steps to make testing available immediately for every resident and staff in Vermont nursing homes, assisted living and congregate care facilities. We need access to this for the next 18 to 24 months. We do not yet know what the pattern this deadly illness will take, and if it returns with a new wave of infections, we must be ready.
I want to personally thank the staff at Thompson House for their courage, our board for its commitment, and the community who have shown us so much support. This makes me enormously proud and renews my drive to improve the chances of survival for our elders – please join me.
