No visitors: KC hospitals ban outsiders, stop elective surgery as coronavirus spreads
Kansas City area hospitals, like others across the country, have banned visitors to keep everyone in their buildings safe from the contagious new coronavirus.
The new rule at the University of Kansas Health System and elsewhere around the metro: No visitors, with few exceptions. Nursing homes have already banned visitors except in end-of-life situations.
HCA Midwest Health hospitals cut off visitors on Thursday. North Kansas City Hospital updated its policy as of Friday, among other things limiting emergency room patients to one visitor. Olathe Health Facilities are keeping out most “non-essential” visitors as well.
For the time being, new moms get only one visitor.
“We don’t do that lightly,” Steve Sites, chief medical officer for the University of Kansas hospital system, said on Friday. “We didn’t want to do that. We tried to resist it. But the evidence from the CDC and Washington (state) and New York ... we needed to do that.”
This is the new normal for hospitals staring down a runaway train. As the number of coronavirus cases climbs around the metro, hospitals are girding for an inevitable demand for everything from hospital beds and ventilators to protective equipment for staff.
Hospitals are freeing up space and cutting back traffic by setting up ways for doctors to talk to patients online rather than in-person and canceling elective surgeries. The KU health system began calling off elective procedures on Monday — no more plastic surgery, but cancer surgeries will continue. Hospital officials said on Friday their operating rooms are currently running at 25 percent capacity, freeing them up for this extraordinary health emergency.
Stites said he knows how hard it will be for family members to keep their distance.
“Some of us have had enough illness in our family that we get what that means, and how lonely you can be,” he said. “The flip side is that if you bring disease into the hospital you create an environment where other people pick it up. Who have we helped and who have we hurt?”
‘Unprecedented times’
For now, it’s best to call ahead before you visit someone in the hospital, said David Dillon, spokesman for the the Missouri Hospital Association, adding that same advice goes for people heading to the emergency room with symptoms of the virus.
“I don’t believe the issues we’re dealing with now are forever issues,” he said.
But, it is clearly not hospital business as usual, and anyone who has been in one over the last couple weeks knows that.
On March 9, HCA Midwest hospitals consolidated points of entry for visitors and began screening people for the virus. Anyone with a fever — one of the symptoms — is asked to stay away.
The KU system’s new visitor policy is nearly identical to changes made at other local hospital. No visitors except:
▪ One parent or guardian for patients under 18.
▪ One support person for labor and delivery patients.
▪ One support person for patients with disabilities or impairments who need assistance.
▪ One support person or driver for patients undergoing outpatient treatment or procedures.
▪ Support people for patients nearing end of life.
In a statement, Kimberly Megow, chief medical officer at HCA Midwest Health, called these “unprecedented times” and said it will take a “selfless” community effort to limit the risk of exposure to patients, staff and doctors.
After the hospital system’s first set of restrictions were put in place, Megow told The Star that people generally appreciated the safety measures.
“At the same time, people are asking very pertinent questions, not only how to protect themselves but their loved ones,” she said.
Why this happened
The Birth Place at Olathe Medical Center is no longer giving pre-admission tours. The cancer center is limiting patients to one visitor during outpatient procedures. And no one with a fever, cough, sore throat or shortness of breath— all coronavirus symptoms — is allowed into the hospice house.
Hospital systems have been working on new visitation rules for weeks, Dillon said. His group, which represents 140 hospitals across Missouri, researched changes being made at hospitals where coronavirus has hit hardest.
“If they are coming inside to visit someone getting treatment for cancer, or something that causes their immune system to be suppressed, as much as we love our relatives and friends, we can harm them in this environment,” said Dillon, adding that visitors risk infecting hospital staff, too.
“It’s not that we’re discouraging people from doing what’s important, because those kinds of communal things are important to the healing process. But we really need to be cognizant of what we’re doing to reduce the risk for individuals as well as conserve the resources for all people, caregivers, patients and visitors.”
Hospitals are moving people out of communal spaces, like waiting rooms, he said.
“People’s biggest days are often spent at a hospital,” said Dillon. “This is where people are born and people in many cases pass away. But if we have waiting rooms full of people who are either symptomatic or asymptomatic ... not only are we exposing the work force to additional risk, then we’re exposing all of these individuals who may be at this very happy or sad event as well.”
Public health officials across the country are pleading with Americans to practice social distancing, a tool used to slow the transmission of an infectious disease.
It’s why restaurants and bars are closing and people are being asked to work from home. It’s why California, New York, Connecticut and Illinois have ordered their residents to stay home.
Now hospitals want their visitors to do the same.
“Inviting your entire family to be in the waiting room during a birth, at any other time, would be a great idea,” said Dillon. “It’s not so great an idea” now.
This story was originally published March 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
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