Resident safety is our top priority at Dow Rummel. We continue to take proactive steps to protect our residents and staff.
Minnehaha County has over 400 active cases right now with over 200 in the last 7 days. So, we are living in what is considered a hot spot right now. We are at almost twice the level of active cases that we were at a month ago. Therefore, with being in a hot spot and having a staff from the health care center test positive this past weekend, for the time being we are needing to reduce the number of outside people we are allowing to come in to our campus.
We have restricted access to the health care center/Allen Wing for anyone other than necessary staff until further notice and are limiting resident’s movement within the nursing home for the time being. We are increasing vitals/health screenings to twice a day for residents in the nursing home and twice a day health screening for staff in that area, as well. We have notified the Department of Health and waiting to hear if we need to do additional testing for residents and staff in the health care center.
We will be restricting the vendors coming in to do work to only those that are absolutely necessary. We are not allowing movers to come in to the licensed areas but will allow them in the independent living as needed for now. We will not be allowing family members to provide transportation or be escorts for any of the residents on campus for now either as we had a lot of family members coming to do that in the last week or so. The beauty salon in the Allen Wing will not be open but the beauty salons in Village East and Main Street will remain open. We will allow the bank to be open on Monday mornings. We will also still allow the podiatrist, massage therapist, chiropractor, Stanford Heath, etc. to come provide services for now for all residents except those in the health care center.
We are asking residents to not go into other areas of the campus but to stay within their buildings. For example, independent living residents should not go into the Allen Wing, Village South or Village East and residents in the Allen Wing, Village South or Village East should stay within their building. We are allowing residents who live here and have a spouse living in Village East or Village South to visit them but we are not currently allowing those visits in the Allen Wing.
Again, the changes we are making are to reduce the exposure/number of people coming in contact with the residents here, for the time being. We will continue to monitor the situation, both within our campus and in Minnehaha County, and make plans to do additional things when the time is appropriate.
We will continue to provide you with updates as they become available. We encourage you to contact us if you have questions. Please know that we are strictly adhering to all directions from our health officials and our top priority continues to be keeping our residents and staff safe and healthy.
Stay SAFE! Stay WELL!