SPECIAL REPORT

SPRING 2020

CATHOLIC HEALTH CARE ON THE FRONT LINES

AS THE DEADLIEST PANDEMIC IN A CENTURY sweeps through New York, the caregivers of ArchCare, the multifaceted health- and eldercare agency of the Archdiocese of New York, are working tirelessly to protect their clients, most of whom are elderly or suffer serious medical conditions. Almost all of them are at high risk for life-threatening illness should they become infected with Covid-19.

This critically important effort is taking place on many fronts, because ArchCare serves a diverse patient population with a wide variety of needs. Its programs (see “The Many Mercies of ArchCare,” Archways Spring 2019) include traditional nursing homes as well as long-term care centers for seniors and others suffering from HIV/ AIDS, severe physical and neurological impairments, Huntington’s disease, ALS, late-stage cancer and kidney disease, and other crippling chronic conditions.

To find out how the pandemic is affecting the agency and its clients, Archways spoke with ArchCare President and CEO Scott LaRue.

Archways: How is Covid-19 impacting ArchCare and its programs?

Scott LaRue: Covid-19 is impacting every one of our programs. It’s widespread in our community, and if it’s widespread in the community it’s going to be widespread in the programs.

We enacted our disaster plan in the third week of February. We actually implemented procedures before the CDC suggested them: We started screening all our staff for temperatures and international travel before they came into any of our facilities. We put infection control monitors in each of our program locations to make sure people were following proper procedures, and to answer questions of family members. Eventually, we prohibited visits by anyone who did not work for ArchCare, which the state later came to require.

We set up a special Covid-19 hotline [877-239-1998 or email [email protected] archcare.org] for the people we serve. It’s a resource for anyone in the archdiocese. Whatever they might need to get through this crisis, that’s what the hotline is there for. They should feel free to call it. It’s staffed 24 hours a day.

Currently we’re taking calls from people in need of answers to medical questions and getting resources to people who are sheltered in place and unable to get out – especially the elderly and the chronically ill.

The hotline is also a resource if someone is trying to reach a patient in one of our programs and they can’t get through. If they call that hotline we’ll connect them to the right people so that they can get information about their loved one.

Our agency is caring for people with Covid-19 throughout the archdiocese. We increased bed capacity at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center, in Harlem, by 67 beds, all for Covid-19 patients.

AW: ArchCare administers the hospital chaplaincy program for the Archdiocese of New York. Is that program functioning during the crisis?

SL: We’ve worked with the hospitals to make sure that the priests can continue to visit patients. At the request of Cardinal Dolan, we also worked to ensure that patients in the temporary hospitals would have access to a Catholic chaplain. Chaplains continue to make rounds, often risking their lives to give last rites and sacraments to dying patients.

AW: The eldercare programs of ArchCare – the PACE program of community care centers as well as the more traditional nursing centers – serve the populations most at risk for Covid-19. How is the agency dealing with this challenge?

SL: In terms of our PACE programs, we have closed two of the four centers and consolidated services into the remaining centers; we have also redeployed staff to support participants in their homes.

In our nursing homes, we’ve deployed tablets so that our patients can FaceTime or Skype with their family and friends. We’ve put together individual activity kits so that they can have things to do in their rooms, because there are no communal dining or group activities during the crisis.

We’re trying to make sure that the people we serve – even though they’re elderly, and they may be immunocompromised – get the same respect and access to care that anyone else in the community is getting.

A nursing home’s ability to prevent the spread of Covid-19 among residents and staff hinges on two things: widespread testing and access to proper personal protective equipment (PPE). ArchCare has remained steadfastly committed to testing as many residents and staff members as available testing supplies will allow, even after new government guidelines were issued that allowed nursing homes to stop or drastically curtail testing.

We took this aggressive approach to testing in order to leave no stone unturned in caring for our residents, including the use of medicines that can only be prescribed to patients who have tested positive for Covid-19.

Unfortunately, nursing homes have been placed in a secondary position in terms of access to personal protective equipment (PPE) – even though we’re treating the same Covid-positive patients in nursing homes that they’re treating in hospitals. The only difference is that hospitals take ventilator-dependent patients and we cannot. If patients become ventilator-dependent, we would have to send them to a hospital.

The state has mandated that nursing homes continue a flow of patients into the homes, and homes may not deny admissions to people with Covid-19. Not that we would, anyway. It’s not our intention in this time of need to turn our backs on people with Covid-19.

Federal and state guidelines also require caregivers who have been exposed to the virus but do not yet show symptoms to remain at work. Combined with the difficulty obtaining PPE, this made it nearly impossible for nursing homes to control the infection in the pandemic’s first weeks.

We fought for access to personal protective equipment from sources across the entire country, and the situation has improved. We’re trying to do everything that we can to ensure that our staff is able to care for these patients as safely as possible.

AW: What can be done for families of Covid patients who are unable to visit their loved ones?

SL: We’ve enhanced family communication throughout the crisis. We implemented a text message and email notification system, and I host a live webinar for our community to answer family members’ questions. Our goal from day one has been to communicate transparently. Several families have sent in notes of thanks at how supportive staff has been during this time.

We’re in a circumstance where it’s possible that a family member was not able to be with their loved one when they passed. That adds complexity and difficulty for everyone involved, and I think it requires additional support and caring.

We are working with Calvary Hospital and their bereavement program so that we can offer bereavement services and support to families affected by Covid-19. This bereavement support is virtual at this point. Over time it could become part of an in-person bereavement support group, but right now you’re not allowed to do that.

AW: Anything you’d like to say in closing?

SL: This is an unprecedented crisis. It’s occurring everywhere in the community. To get through it, we just need to pull together for the benefit of the people we serve.

To donate to ArchCare, visit archcare.org.