WHAT IS AN ESSENTIAL CARE VISITOR?

An Essential Care Visitor is a Family Caregiver, a partner in care with a nursing facility who directly cares for their loved one in collaboration with the resident's interdisciplinary care team in a long term care facility.   Sometimes, an Essential Care Visitor feeds their loved one and assists with their Activities of Daily Living.   Other times, the Essential Care Visitor executes integral parts of the medical and clinical care tasks that 

Insurance / Medicaid / Medicare does not cover in the institution ~ 

or that staff cannot get to because of systemic staffing shortages.   

Essential Care Visitors might spend 1-7 hours a day in a nursing facility.  Often, they interact with their Loved Ones' resident mates, and provide social and emotional nourishment for other Facility residents too.   Essential Care Visitors are family members, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, hired one to ones from an agency, mothers, daughters.    We roughly estimate essential care visitors are about 10-`20% of the visitor population in a residential facility.  Pre-pandemic, these essential care visitors provided integral care support sustaining a resident's life.   As visitation is now open, we are receiving surveys that the 10-20% visitation of the Essential Caregiver remains consistent with our advocacy that the 

Essential Care Visitor represents 10-20% of a congregate care setting population.

With Federal Visitation Mandates open in long term care - our Facilities are experiencing this percentage rates.

Essential Care Visitors are an Essential Part of the Care for a Vulnerable Total Care Resident.  Not everyone has an Essential Care Visitor.  However, the spirit of an Essential Care Visitor is such, that often the care visitor has a mindful watch on other residents, oversight and voice within the 

long term care community,

We dreamed of a day when the Essential Care Visitor check box is on the Nursing Facility Admission Paperwork and Resident Chart has a space for the name of a Resident's Essential (Personal Care Giver) Visitor.  As of March 29, 2021 - in New York State - each Resident is regulated to have 

(2) Personal Caregivers listed by their name in their chart.  Dreams come true and our day ARRIVED!!!

Essential Care Visitors save lives, falls, illness and provide preventive care with in partnership with the care staff in Nursing Facilities. 

The current New York State Personal Caregiver Bill was passed on the State Legislature Floor, both through the Senate on February 22, 2021

 and the Assembly on March 2, 2021.

The Personal Caregiver Bill was signed into New York State Public Health Law on March 29, 2021.  

This unprecedented Bill will help Family Caregivers now and in the future, 

to be never locked out again.  Our Loved Ones will not needlessly suffer from being kept from receiving their bridge~care.

There is an ADDENDUM
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/s7346

 to the Personal Caregiver Bill that needs passed in our 

New York State Legislature so that our Essential Care Visitor can continue to serve their loved ones

in collaborative care models for our vulnerable in long term care facilities.