{"id":11701,"date":"2020-06-04T17:54:33","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T17:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=11701"},"modified":"2020-06-04T17:54:34","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T17:54:34","slug":"covid-19-texas-senior-advocates-focus-on-long-term-care-facilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=11701","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19: Texas senior advocates focus on long-term care facilities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Texas has promised to test more than 230,000 residents and staff at the state\u2019s 1,224 licensed nursing homes by the end of May.<\/em><\/strong> Photo: sabinevanerp\/Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By ROZ BROWN<\/strong>
Texas News Service<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 It\u2019s estimated that about half of the people who have died from COVID-19 have been nursing home residents, and senior advocates want Texas to tackle the crisis at every level of government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AARP Texas<\/a> state director Tina Tran said local and state officials, along with Texas legislators, need to prioritize the health and safety of seniors at long-term care facilities. That means providing timely information to help families make decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want facilities to assure that they\u2019re providing testing, and they have adequate personal protective equipment,\u201d she said. \u201cWe would like to require daily reporting of facilities to help manage public health response and keep families up to date.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tran said funding is critical to guarantee there\u2019s sufficient recruiting, training and retention at care facilities to provide the residents with adequate care. She adds it\u2019s important that families are consistently connected to their loved ones through video chats or phone calls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Communicating has been critical for Randy Jones, whose 85-year-old mother is recovering after contracting COVID-19 at a nursing home outside of Houston. He said he believes his mother\u2019s care facility is one of the best, but needs to prioritize connecting with family, because many seniors are not tech-savvy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPart of their contingency plan needs to be, \u2018Who can these people communicate with? How can we facilitate that? Can we take iPads into their rooms, once a day for five minutes, so they can talk to their family, tell them how they\u2019re feeling?\u2019 Those contingency plans need to provide for that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until the crisis, Diane Pope took her 95-year-old father on long drives near his San Antonio nursing home. Now, she relies on social media to connect with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can see how they interact with him and they\u2019re all wearing masks. And when there\u2019s a problem with the internet \u2013 which there often is, unfortunately \u2013 he gets very upset,\u201d she said. \u201cBut he\u2019s learned that he can call somebody, and if it doesn\u2019t pop back up in a little while, they\u2019ll call me again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until recently, there was no federal mandate for nursing homes to report coronavirus outbreaks or deaths. AARP wants a requirement that all long-term care facilities compile data on cases and deaths related to COVID-19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ROZ BROWNTexas News Service AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 It\u2019s estimated that about half of the people who have died from COVID-19 have been nursing home residents, and senior advocates want Texas to tackle the crisis at every level of government. AARP Texas state director Tina Tran said local and state officials, along with Texas legislators, need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11702,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11701\/revisions\/11702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}