EDITORIAL: OUR VIEW: Allowing visits to resume at Florida nursing homes is humane, beneficial -- and premature

People who have made the knotty, no-win decision to entrust their loved ones to elder care facilities have already experienced more than their share of guilt, frustration and heartbreak. It's a fundamental human obligation, to tend to our own, and admitting that doing so is not possible or practical most often feels like failure.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has required that frail elders and others with disabilities endure separation from their families, has only added to this stressful burden. Floridians with wives, husbands, parents and grandparents in long-term care facilities have spoken movingly about the hardship of being denied time together when every day of life is a limited resource. And they worry about the effects of extended isolation -- and perhaps less than adequate attention -- on residents' mental and physical health.

Hearing the plaintive outcry, Gov. Ron DeSantis -- who has earned praise for early, decisive steps to safeguard this fragile population -- convened a task force to develop guidelines for what a potential visitation policy might look like. This week, that panel delivered its recommendations, which basically call for a resumption of visits along a hierarchy that allows in-room access for "essential" guests who can provide help with bathing, dressing, feeding or emotional support.

That last essential service -- hugs and hand-holding -- was added out of concern for visitors not strong enough themselves to render practical assistance. And it prompted a rare public display of discord in the DeSantis administration, with state Surgeon General Scott Rivkees objecting to such a loose interpretation of the Centers for Disease Control guidelines.

Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Mary Mayhew, the task force chair, countered his caution with compassion.

"Dr. Rivkees, we've got a lot of people in our nursing homes and assisted living facilities who are suffering from significant depression," she said.

For a resident unlikely ever to leave an institution for home, mental and emotional well-being can logically be considered even more crucial than his or her physical condition. So this is a valid factor to weigh among so many others when deciding how and whether family visits should resume.

But the task force -- composed of state officials, elder care industry trade group leaders and Jacksonville resident Mary Daniel, whose story of working as a dishwasher at a memory care facility to be near her husband generated national fame -- seems to have skipped over the "whether" and gone straight to the "how." And their blueprint, based on all-too-familiar precautions outlined by the CDC, is probably as good as it can be just now.

It is not, however, good enough.

Reintroducing folks from the outside world into the breeding-ground environment of long-term care, welcome as their masked faces might be, has too much potential to unravel the good effects of months spent stemming the spread of disease in these places. This is not just a concern for the residents themselves -- who may gladly bear the risk of infection for a chance to be reunited with the ones they love -- but for the health care professionals, aides, cooks and maintenance workers who have already sacrificed so much in this pandemic.

And it's a concern for these employees' families. And for the schools their children may attend. And for their spouses' workplaces. This is how a short-sighted failure to contain a contagious disease operates.

AARP's Florida State Director Jeff Johnson, who has been monitoring this contentious issue from the beginning, responded to the task force recommendations with the most pertinent question: Why open the doors to these facilities when they are so close to getting rapid-response tests that could screen visitors as well as staff?

Why not wait just a little longer and do this right, when we have, all of us, already endured so much?

The Herald-Tribune Editorial Board

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