COVID-19

Precautions

Our residents and team members understand the importance of their roles within the community to protect themselves and each other. We continue our vigilance in following precautions to prevent the transmission and spread of COVID-19.  In addition to washing hands frequently, wearing masks, and keeping a physical distance from others, our community continues the following protocols to keep themselves and others safe:

Community Entrance: Entrances to ECS communities are limited to a single point of entry to allow for health screening, including a temperature check, for everyone who enters and exits the building.

Masks:

• All team members are required to wear masks and additional personal protective equipment (PPE), depending on their position. Specific guidance for team members can be found on Paylocity.
• Residents should wear their masks whenever any team member is in their apartment for any reason and when they leave their apartment or leave the campus for any reason.
  • Exceptions: when walking outdoors, if alone or with a member of your household or pet, you may remove your mask, but please have it accessible to put on when approaching others.
• All visitors, guests, and contractors will be required to be escorted, wash their hands and wear a mask while on the campus.

Our Commitment to Cleanliness: In our everyday cleaning, ECS Communities, uses the highest classification of disinfectants recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization to treat known pathogens.

Surface Areas: In public spaces, we have used hospital-grade disinfectants, which is done with increased frequency. In our residences, our communities have added to its detailed cleaning practices, requiring all surfaces to be thoroughly cleaned with hospital-grade disinfectants.

Resident, Team Member, and Guest Contact: To help alleviate the risk of COVID-19 transmission through person-to-person contact, we have placed signage throughout each campus to remind everyone to maintain physical distancing protocols and have removed or re-arranged furniture to allow more space for distancing. We also have placed additional hand sanitizer stations throughout each campus.

Testing Protocols

Episcopal Communities & Services has adopted an aggressive approach in our fight against COVID-19. Testing provides us with valuable information to keep our residents and team members safe. While these results only represent a snapshot in time, it does allow us to identify individuals who do not present any symptoms and might otherwise go undetected.

We are fortunate to have excellent resources to aide us in this approach, which allow us to proactively test our residents and team members under the following schedule onsite at the Life Plan Community in which they work and live:

• Testing is required of all Care Center (Skilled Nursing Facility) team members: twice weekly
• Testing is required of all direct care team members, including outside agency, temporary staff, contractors, and team members with more than one job: weekly
• Testing is required of all other team members: monthly
• All residents are offered and encouraged to be tested: monthly

*These frequencies may increase at any given time.

Outcomes

Resident and Team Member Monitoring

If a resident or team member tests positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), a community health bulletin is issued to inform the ECS community affected. In addition to rigorous testing, residents and team members are monitored for symptoms on an ongoing basis. They may also be placed on quarantine and require testing following a hospital stay, international or domestic travel using mass transportation, if they are a new resident, or had high exposure to an individual that tests positive for COVID-19.

Any resident or team member that tests positive will self-isolate according to licensing and regulatory guidelines. Contact tracing is conducted in all positive COVID-19 cases and any resident or team member identified with having significant exposure will also quarantine according to licensing and regulatory guidelines.

Each community has a separate area on campus with designated team members for any resident to use if they need care in isolation as a result of COVID-19.  This area contains its own supply room and showers for use by the dedicated heroes in the COVID unit.