As we have been living through the uncertainty of this pandemic for the last many months, one thing remains clear – At Charter House, the health and safety of our residents always comes first.
Here are a few updates regarding our current practices at Charter House.
- Visits: Charter House has a restricted visitor policy aligning with Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) guidelines.
- Residents within Independent Living can choose to visit with loved ones outside of Charter House (such as on our patio space, walking around the building, going to a child’s home). We highly encourage them to maintain social distance and keep their face masks on during visits.
- Residents living within our care areas can visit with family via patio visits, window visits, and Zoom visits.
- In September, we conducted a successful pilot of indoor visits in accordance with the MDH Level 2 Visitation guidelines.
- On October 12th, MDH released new guidance for indoor visits. Charter House is ready to implement indoor visits after we have gone 14 days without any new positive cases of COVID in staff or residents.
- COVID-19 testing: One of our newest and most exciting developments is our testing processes instituted as part of a routine surveillance for COVID.
- On September 29 & 30 we tested nearly 700 individuals – residents who consented to participate and all staff. We are thrilled to report all tested were negative.
- In addition, we have been testing all Charter House staff for the past several weeks and plan to continue through at least the end of October. Testing frequency for staff is dependent on several factors such as the COVID positivity rate within Olmsted County.
- Per MDH guidance, we test residents living within our care areas for COVID on a weekly basis until we reach 14 days with no new positive cases. Any new case in a resident or staff restarts our testing cycle.
- Daily staff health-screening: Since April, each Charter House employee has undergone screening before start of each work shift.
- Staff is instructed take their temperature and monitor for any symptoms twice daily while at home.
- Now all who enter Charter House have their temperature taken and are asked questions regarding symptoms and potential exposure to COVID.
- The screening is conducted by a new, specially-trained Mayo Clinic screening team.