COVID-19 Resource Round-Up: Visitation Toolkit

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Terri Foley

To help members operationalize Monday’s release of MDH guidance for visitation in Assisted Living and HWS settings and CMS visitation guidance in memorandum QSO-20-39-NH,

the LeadingAge MN team developed a comprehensive Toolkit for Visitation Guidance Implementation including implementation resources, communications templates, and reference documents.

Here are the implementation tools featured in the toolkit:

• Visitation Decision Guide and Flowchart: This guide walks through nursing home, assisted living, and HWS guidance in a visual way and provides a high-level overview of implementation.
• Considerations Checklist for Visitation Modification: Use this worksheet to document your site’s status on COVID-19 cases and positivity as well as other critical factors such as adequate staffing, access to PPE, local hospital capacity, and visitor screening process.
• Tip Sheet for Determining the Covid-19 Positivity Rate In Your County: This step-by-step tool helps you calculate your county’s positivity rate using CMS or MDH data including links to the rates.
• Operational Implementation Checklist: This list of questions highlights major categories of work to be completed for resuming indoor visitation. Categories include policies & plans, indoor prep, training, and communications.
• Template for Visitation Policy: Customize this policy and procedures template to document your site’s approach to implementing the new visitation guidance.

The toolkit also has sample letters for communicating your visitation situation to residents, families, staff, media, and the community. Guidance links from MDH and CMS are also provided in the toolkit.

If you have questions about the CMS or MDH guidance or any of the tools above, please contact Kari Everson, LeadingAge Minnesota, Director of Clinical Care and Nurse Consultant at keverson@leadingagemn.org or 651-380-2032; or Jonathan Lips, VP of Legal & Regulatory Affairs, at jlips@leadingagemn.org or 651-603-3510.