News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Expect Tennessee nursing homes to remain closed for the foreseeable future.
With the governor’s order lifting restrictions, Scott Stevens of Overton County Health and Rehab in Livingston said said staff at the facility began to notice social media posts about people looking forward to visiting loved ones at the nursing home. He said they wanted to quickly inform families that would not be possible.
“Whenever the talk started this week that we’re going to be opening up and things are going to become normal, we started getting a buzz that people thought they are going back into nursing homes to visit loved ones,” Stevens said. “So we really just wanted to make sure everyone understands that is not the case.”
Stevens said nursing homes follow federal guidelines instead of local or state direction.
“The federal government, as far as nursing homes, are over the policies we follow and put into place,” Stevens said. “They have their own team that is over nursing homes. We have state inspectors, but there are also federal ones.”
Stevens said at a press conference in Livingston on Thursday that federal inspectors are currently in the Upper Cumberland.
“These are not our state health inspectors,” Stevens said. “There are federal inspectors going through nursing homes right now in the Upper Cumberland making sure they are doing what they need to be doing to protect their residents. I think that’s a great thing, because here we think we are, but we welcome for someone to come in and give us a mock inspection. I think it’s a good thing.”
As hard as it is to be away from loved ones, Stevens said it is important to keep nursing facilities closed to protect those vulnerable communities.
“The number one reason is to limit exposure to our residents to people who may be contagious with COVID-19 but show no symptoms,” Stevens said. “The fewer people we can have come in contact with our residents, the greater the chance of us slowly stopping it or eliminating it from our building.”
Stevens said nursing homes will be among the last businesses to reopen, which is in the third phase under federal recommendations.
For more information on the guidelines for reopening nursing homes, you can look on the Department of Health and Human Services website at https://www.hhs.gov/.
