Update for Mercy Health Residential Aged Care residents and families

Dear Mercy Health residents and families,

Our response to Covid-19 in Aged Care

Over the past few days you may have seen media coverage of concerns from aged care providers and others in the community about the current requirements for aged care providers to close our doors to visitors each time we have reported cases of COVID-19.

While we acknowledge government public health instructions, I wanted to write to you today to let you know that Mercy Health has established its own Business as Usual (BaU) response to COVID-19 based on how we have learned to protect our homes as we learn to live with COVID-19.

With COVID-19 continuing to circulate in the community, it has become common for us to experience concurrent outbreaks in our homes. The Mercy Health BaU response is part of the standard way in which we operate. It outlines the actions our homes regularly undertake to ensure they are safer for our residents, visitors and staff, and includes, but is not limited to, the action points below.

1. Covid exists broadly in our communities. Mercy Health aims to prevent Covid getting into our homes as much as possible by:

• Screening everyone who enters the home
• Auditing hand hygiene
• Using N95 masks and eye shields when there is increased Covid in the community
• Donning and doffing training and auditing (the safe way to apply all PPE)
• Triple vaccinations for all staff (including support services staff)
• Encouraging all residents to be vaccinated
• Allowing only vaccinated visitors to enter our homes

2. When we become aware of a Covid-positive case associated with one of our homes it informs who we alert to ensure that required supplies and services are activated and communications are initiated in a timely and consistent manner. We aim to reinforce our ability to do this in future through regular Covid-19 response exercises.
3. To ensure we are as prepared as reasonably possible to respond to an outbreak when a visitor or resident is identified as Covid-positive, or if there are two or more linked staff cases we activate the following:

• Communications to the outbreak response team
• Notifications to the State or regional Public Health Unit and Commonwealth Department of Health
• Testing of all staff on duty and residents
• Contact tracing
• Adopting full PPE in the relevant area of the home
• Isolation and monitoring
• Daily communications to residents and families

4. Working closely with the Public Health Units (PHUs)

We work closely with the PHUs in all regions to respond to outbreaks at our homes. We follow all Department of Health guidelines for managing COVID-19 exposures and minimising the risk to residents and staff. As such, decisions on closing our homes to visitors are a government mandated action with which we must adhere. At the same time, we also work with the local PHUs for the safe re-opening of our homes to visitors.

We acknowledge how critically important it is for residents to continue to have visitors as much as possible. Subject to the directions of the local PHU, our policy enables at least one visitor per day to each resident except for residents with an active infection, even in part of the home where there is an outbreak. In that situation we inform the visitor, supply N95s and eye protection and the visitor can stay with the resident in their room.

Part of our approach includes making sure that residents who have active COVID-19 continue to isolate in their rooms and that staff caring for them are wearing full personal protective equipment to minimise any potential risk of infection to others in the home. We recognise that prolonged isolation can have a serious impact on mental health, which is why we are doing everything we can to enable residents to leave their rooms safely as soon as possible.

Throughout this pandemic we have not had a single home experience a ‘lockdown’ that was prolonged by our own actions, we have only ever had lockdowns extended because of public health precautionary decisions. By following our own BaU processes, we are giving the public health units of government the greatest confidence that we will be able to manage safely when restrictions are lifted.

Thank you for your understanding and support in helping keep our aged care homes safe. If you have any questions, please contact the Manager of your Mercy Health home.

Yours sincerely,

Adj Assoc Prof Felix Pintado
Chief Executive
Residential Aged Care, Home Care and Seniors Living