OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Nursing homes in Oklahoma are now coming up with their own plan to combat Covid-19.
“It’s not ‘If it’s going to come here.’ It’s ‘Covid-19 will be here,’” said Kimberly Green, Diakonos Group Chief Operating Officer.
If you want to get past the front doors of the Lodge at Brookline, you’re going to have to do a few things first.
“There is a sanitization station where you will have to Lysol your shoes,” Green said.
The owners of the OKC nursing and rehabilitation center near NW Expressway and May are on high alert after recent coronavirus deaths at a Washington state nursing home.
“Whenever that news came out, it was devastating. We were worried about something like that and for it to start so early, it was very concerning,” Green said.
That’s why Diakonos Group is implementing sanitization stations at all 20 of their facilities across Oklahoma.
Even after sanitizing your hands, you’ll have to wait another 5 minutes and fill out a questionnaire asking if you’ve recently flown or been to a hotspot for the coronavirus. If so, you can’t come in for 14 days.
“But the healthy people are the ones that are bringing it into our most vulnerable. So we have to have stations like this to cleanse and protect,” Green said.
At the group’s Broken Arrow facility, the same rules. But family members of residents don’t seem to mind.
“That gives the opportunity if they need to make any changes or adjustments. They’ve already got the ball rolling,” said Shari Blankenship, who has a relative at the Tulsa area facility.
“I think it’s a good thing. It’s a preventative measure that’s, I think, justified,” said Scott Blankenship.
The company says they have also adjusted visitation hours for their residents’ families.
