Tennessee Lifts All State Visitation Restrictions On Nursing Homes
Tennessee will lift all state restrictions on nursing home visitation by this weekend. But facilities are already reining in expectations of families desperate to see their loved ones.
In October, the state had backed off its blanket ban on indoor visitations and allowed them so long as a facility has no new coronavirus cases in the past 14 days. But this still didn’t allow for hugs and has often required testing of visitors.
“Now that vaccinations at all long-term care facilities are nearing completion, we are ready to transition to a more sustainable approach of following these best practices for safe operation of long-term care facilities in Tennessee,” Dr. Lisa Piercey, the state’s health commissioner, said in a statement on Wednesday.
But the reality is, nursing homes mostly answer to the federal authorities who pay most of the bills. And the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services still has some pretty strict guidelines about visitation, that are roughly the same as the state’s 14-day rule that’s going away.
Read more: https://wpln.org/post/tennessee-lifts-all-state-visitation-restrictions-on-nursing-homes/