County’s Lasata senior campus remains locked down

While most area residents are emerging from the stay-at-home rules set in place in response to Covid-19 concerns, residents at the Lasata Senior Living Campus in Cedarburg will continue to be prevented from seeing family and friends in person.

But those restrictions are being eased somewhat.

Considered to be at a high risk of contracting the coronavirus, residents at all three facilities were restricted to their rooms since mid-March and not allowed to see family members except in end-of-life situations.

“That’s being lifted a bit to allow limited safe movement within the facility,” Lasata Administrator Amanda Kohal said in an interview. “If there is a small group of folks together, they are wearing masks and keeping socially distant.”

Current policy from the Centers for Disease Control, the Washington Ozaukee Public Health Department and the state is that in-room visits at care centers like Lasata remain in place until a Covid-19 vaccine is developed, which, according to some estimates, could be a year or longer.

“That is the recommendation at this time to protect our vulnerable population,” she said.

With the rest of Wisconsin largely opening up, Kohal said residents’ family members want to know when they can visit their loved ones.

“The No. 1 question I get is, ‘When are you going to open up?’” Kohal told the Ozaukee County Health and Human Services Committee last week. 

Kohal and her staff have made it a priority to help residents maintain contact with family and friends, she said.

Visits from family and friends have been limited to those held through windows or glass doors, telephone calls and remote face-to-face conversations using Zoom, Facetime or other apps.

“Some residents talk daily on their personal phone and some have visitors come to the windows daily or several times a week.

Kohal said one resident talks to his wife on an almost daily basis from his second-floor patio.

Most such visits are scheduled through the Lasata office, but some are impromptu.

“We had someone dress up in a bunny costume for Easter and visit people through the glass,” Kohal said.

Other unannounced visits have included children drawing sidewalk pictures and people dropping off food. So much food, in fact, that staff have coined a phrase for how much weight they have gained the last two-plus months — the Quarantine 15. 

“I think the staff has been well taken care of,” she said. “It’s been pretty phenomenal the way the families have reached out to us.”

A “buddy system” has been developed in which each Lasata employee, not just nurses and caregivers, has been assigned to a resident.

“Our buddy system has been very successful,” she said. “We all jumped in with two feet.”

One of the duties of each “buddy” is to help the resident navigate digital devices to connect with families and friends, Kohal said.

“The majority of Care Center residents need assistance with those visits,” Kohal said.

To help in that effort, Lasata bought 12 iPads and tablets for residents to use.

“We also use the tablets to conduct telehealth visits with their routine health care providers like physicians, music therapists etc.,” Kohal said in an email.

  Lasata’s response to Covid-19 has included purchasing $60,000 worth of personal protection equipment and $11,000 on a negative pressure unit, which can be used to quarantine a person who has contracted the virus.

The total bill has not been tallied, but Lasata has already been reimbursed $625,729 by the federal government. 

Most other expenses are expected to be covered as well, she said.

The number of residents at Lasata has fallen since March as elective medical procedures were shut down and more people stayed home or moved in with family rather than into a facility.

In April, the average daily number of residents dropped to 105 and in May dropped below 100. The 2020 budgeted number is 125. 

On Tuesday, the number of residents stood at 101, Kohal said.

“Our census is climbing now with elective surgeries back on and we’re getting a bit back to usual business,” she said. 

A drop in the number of residents means a loss of income, but County Administrator Jason Dzwinel said Lasata has a healthy fund balance to help weather the storm.

The Lasata campus has been able to maintain its staffing levels through the restrictions, even when workers were limited to working at only one facility.

“We have long relationships with many of our workers and the majority of our people decided to work exclusively at Lasata, as did some contracted employees,” Kohal said.

The amount of overtime paid out to Lasata has exceeded this year’s budgeted amount, Kohal said, although she couldn’t say how much.

“There just is more work for everybody because of the increased monitoring,” she said.

Workers are screened for the presence of the virus before each shift.

No residents have tested positive for the coronavirus, although two workers did.

Lost in the shuffle due to the concerns over the coronavirus, is that the Care Center earned a five-star rating from Medicare.gov Nursing Home Compare, the highest rating possible, based on health inspections, staffing and the quality of resident care.

“Those are three important ways to measure the quality of nursing homes,” Kohal said. “We’re very proud and excited for the recognition we received. We never really got a chance to celebrate.”