Connecticut’s Department of Health is now asking nursing homes — homes to some of the most vulnerable — to accept coronavirus-positive patients.
The new guidance, released Thursday, January 6, details the expectations the department has for nursing homes when dealing with admissions. While the Health Department previously required transferred patients to test negative for the virus within 48 hours before going to a long-term care facility, that requirement is now null and void.
“Hospitalized patients should be discharged from acute care whenever clinically indicated, regardless of COVID-19 status,” Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani wrote in the memo:
- Meeting criteria for discontinuation of isolation precautions (also known as transmission-based precautions) is not a prerequisite for discharge from a hospital. PAC providers should be equipped to safely care for individuals with active COVID-19 who are ready for discharge from acute care.
- Vaccination status of an individual should not influence decisions about hospital discharge or PAC admission.
- Discharge should not be held due to a pending SARS-CoV-2 test, as receiving PAC providers should now have quarantine policies in place based on COVID-19 vaccination status.
- If testing is requested before transfer, no more than a single test for SARS-CoV-2 infection within 48 hours of transfer to PAC should be required for admission to the PAC setting. Any type of diagnostic SARS-CoV-2 test available should be acceptable.
Further, the memo instructs hospitals to report to the state any Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) “unable to accept new admissions due to COVID-19 infection status.”
Blue states, such as New York and Pennsylvania, came under tremendous fire at the start of the pandemic for initially requiring nursing homes to accept coronavirus-positive patients, leading to thousands of deaths among the most vulnerable. Notably, Rachel Levine, the transgender U.S. assistant secretary for health, served as Pennsylvania’s health secretary at the time and moved his 95-year-old mother from a nursing home despite his department’s guidance instructing nursing homes to readmit “stable” coronavirus patients.