COVID-19 News
April 22, 2020
Dear Residents and Family Members:
First of all, we at The Grove Care & Wellness Assisted Living want to extend our heartfelt thanks to each of you for your support and understanding during this challenging time. Your cooperation is key in allowing our team to focus our efforts on keeping your loved ones safe and comfortable. We are truly all in this together.
We would like to update you on how things are going at The Grove as it relates to COVID-19.
We are happy to report, we continue to have NO residents or staff with a positive diagnosis of COVID-19, or showing signs or symptoms of illness.
However, since our last communication, we learned yesterday that there is now a resident from the skilled nursing section of our building with a positive COVID-19 test.
As you know, our assisted and independent living residents and staff share common areas, elevator, dining and kitchen areas with the skilled residents and staff. In our earlier communication, we indicated the measures we had already put in place including:
- Removing all seating and couches on the first floor to encourage social distancing and decreased the interaction between our residents and skilled residents/staff; and
- We distributed washable, reusable cloth masks to all of our residents and continue to encourage them to wear them when outside of their apartments.
In addition, starting in late March/early April:
- We restricted visitation to essential healthcare providers and end-of-life visitation only and daily screened all entering visitors and staff for COVID-19 signs and symptoms and conducted temperature checks;
- We stopped all off-site outings and encourage residents to stop or limit trips outside of the facility;
- We started daily calls with our sister properties where we share updates from the CDC, CMS, local health department and other experts as well as speak to any PPE, staffing or other supply needs;
- We implemented daily observation of residents for signs/symptoms during designated med passes, and taking temperatures. As always, we will notify residents’ primary health care providers and designated family members of any changes in their loved one’s condition, whether potentially related to COVID-19 or not; and
- We initiated the regular disinfection of door knobs, hand rails, keypads…all touchable surfaces.
Since learning of this positive skilled nursing resident, we have reworked our internal processes to make every attempt to limit any cross contamination between the skilled sections and assisted/independent living sections of the building. These include:
- We have provided our staff access to one set of stairs not used by skilled nursing staff or residents. This will cut down how often our staff are in small elevators with skilled nursing staff and residents.
- Our staff screen each other for signs, symptoms and temperature checks versus being screened by the first floor receptionist who is screening skilled nursing staff.
- There are currently no staff that work in both the skilled nursing section and our assisted/independent living floors.
- The only shared service between the skilled nursing and assisted living residents is food preparation in the kitchen. Our employees don’t enter the kitchen and dietary staff do not enter into resident rooms. Only our employees deliver food to our residents in their room.
We continue to work hard to check in with our residents during this time to ensure these changes and isolation are not adversely impacting our residents, but please share with us if you or your loved one has feelings of depression, anxiety or uncertainty.
As always, please reach out with questions, concerns, or requests for assistance. We will continue to keep you updated if any big changes occur or as additional information becomes available.
Sincerely,
Briana Espinoza
Executive Director
The Grove Care & Wellness Assisted Living
3401 Lemon Street
Riverside, CA 92501
