PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — For the safety of both patients and staff, Northern Light AR Gould Hospital has announced the return to a “no visitor” policy, other than identified exceptions beginning Thursday, Dec. 17.
“We have not made this decision lightly, and we understand it may not be popular, especially during this holiday season. However, the safety of our patients, residents, and staff must come first,” Dr. Jay Reynolds, senior physician executive, said.
“We are seeing increasing numbers of COVID-19 in our community, and as we head into another holiday event that will likely draw people together, we must take the steps needed to try to keep COVID-19 community spread out of our facilities,” Reynolds said.
With this visitor policy change, no visitors will be allowed for inpatients at the hospital. The only identified exceptions to this are for pediatric patients, laboring mothers, patients with special needs, or patients at end of life.
Visitors had already been restricted in the Emergency Department, Day Surgery Department, Dialysis Center, Cancer Care practice and all outpatient practices. Those restrictions remain in place. There are limited identified exceptions, particularly for children and patients with special needs, but overall, patients should not plan to have people accompany them for appointments or procedures at the hospital or any of AR Gould patient practices.
Questions regarding exceptions can be directed to the specific practice or department to which a patient is going.
Visits at Northern Light Continuing Care in Mars Hill were also recently ended.
When community numbers were low and there were no COVID-19-positive residents, the facility offered first outside in-person visits and then inside in-person visits with strict protocols in place, Reynolds said.
“However, with the spike in numbers in the region, our Continuing Care facility escalated from low to moderate risk, ending those visits earlier this month. It has since escalated to high risk, again due to the increased community spread of COVID-19 in our region,” Reynolds said.
The Mars Hill nursing home continues to have no positive COVID-19 residents.
Staff at both AR Gould Hospital and Continuing Care are making other options available for patients or residents to connect with loved ones, such as phone calls and use of FaceTime, Zoom and other technology. Devices and hands-on assistance will be provided as needed.
