Nursing Homes Seek Flexibility to Limit Visits as Omicron Surges

The nursing home industry—bracing for a spike in Covid-19 infections due to the omicron variant—has asked the Biden administration to amend current guidelines requiring them to provide unlimited, unrestricted visitation for residents and preventing them from restricting access to the facilities.

The agency’s updated November guidance on visitation appears to forbid “any restriction on visitation, regardless of staffing levels, community positivity rates, or severity of facility outbreak,” officials from three leading industry trade groups said in a Dec. 17 letter to Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator for the Centers for the Medicare & Medicaid Services. “We are concerned that the absolute, unconditional ...