Nursing and assisted living homes have gone to great lengths to ensure the safety and protection of staff and residents in Greene County, since the governor’s public health proclamation was announced in mid-March.

Lori Harrah is the director of long-term care at Greene County Medical Center and she says some of the changes they have made include not allowing any visitors and screening all long-term care employees before and after their shifts. Harrah notes another change is implementing Skype so that residents can communicate with loved ones, which she says has been a major adjustment.

“Some of our residents have family members that were visiting once or twice per day. For the most part it’s gone very smoothly. On occasion we have a little glitch in our system of course, we’ve had to reboot Skype a couple of times (or) reach out to a family member, so we initiate the Skype on our end. But for the most part, the residents are hanging in there.”

As a precaution, Harrah adds they have a plan in case a resident has symptoms of the virus or they test positive, where long-term care can be separated into “well” versus “sick” areas and have dedicated staff for each.