Families of long-term care residents continue to face pushback from facilities choosing not to follow holiday guidance from the state.

As we first reported last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services put out new guidance for nursing home residents, recommending they don’t leave their facilities for outside visits and quarantine if they do. This recommendation is in direct conflict with the latest guidance from the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), which oversees long-term care facilities in Florida.

What You Need To Know

  • CMA and AHCA are still at odds over holiday visitation guidance

  • Families say long-term care facilities will quarantine loved ones after visits

In a previous statement to Spectrum News, AHCA said its guidance still stands, but some families say they are now being told otherwise by LTC facilities.

Jennifer Noa said her family was told that if her 71-year-old mother Elsa Noa leaves for a Thanksgiving visit, she will have to quarantine in isolation when she returns – even if she passes a COVID-19 screening. The younger Noa worries that could mean her mother won’t get her much needed physical therapy.

“Her first words to me when I kind of started to tell her the implication, she goes ‘oh, a punishment,” Noa said. “That was her direct comment back to me when I started to communicate to her what this means by us bringing her home.”

Noa said her mother already has her hopes up for the visit, and the family plans to follow CDC guidelines at home, including wearing masks.

“She’s excited,” Noa said. “Being able to have her come home, to her it would mean being in her own bed, being in her own home.”

Mary Daniel, a family advocate and member of the governor’s long-term care task force, said she is hearing more of the same from members of her Facebook group Caregivers for Compromise. Daniel said she reached out to AHCA, asking them to either enforce their visitation guidelines or rescind them if they don’t feel it’s safe.

“We are reasonable people. We will do what’s in the best interest of everybody in the facility,” Daniel said. “Why am I put in a position where I have to make that decision, when I’m only following the information you’ve given me? That you said was OK and I’m following that, and now I’ve hurt my loved one.”

Spectrum News reached out to AHCA for an updated statement but has yet to receive one.