McHenry Times

Illinois Rep. Dan Ugaste took a moment on the House floor to tell about his wife not seeing her mother during the pandemic.

“There are those in this state who did not get to see their loved ones for months on end once this pandemic started prior to that family member passing away,” Ugaste said on the House floor. “My wife was one of those people. She didn't get to see her mother for three and a half months prior to her mother passing away. She got to go in and see her when her mother was completely comatose and say a final goodbye. That was it."

Illinois politicians presented a bill that would help families see loved ones residing in a nursing home during events like pandemics.

Senate Bill 1405 would require nursing homes and other health care facilities to allow residents or patients to have at least one visitor in the event of public health emergencies in Illinois. A clergyperson would not count as a visitor. Visitors could be subject to health screenings before entering the facility.

Although the AARP wrote COVID-19 killed nursing home staff and residents, the New York Times reported nursing home deaths are hitting low numbers.

“We have a lot of nursing homes around the country that lags behind,” Dr. David Grabowski, a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School, said to the Times. “I think there are going to be real issues of equity here.”

Senator Dan McConchie is the primary sponsor of the legislation. SB 1405 would amend the Medical Patient Rights Act, removing language that gave total power to health care facilities to regulate and restrict hours of visitation or the number of visitors per patient.

NPR reported states such as New York and Texas have similar rules that allows visitors into nursing homes during public health events.

“(The coronavirus) cannot be used as an excuse to deny patients basic rights, and one of the rights of being a patient, I think, is having your loved ones present,” Florida Gov. Roy DeSantis said at a news conference in February.

Fox News reported earlier this year on a Libertyville family whose grandfather died alone in a hospital. His family was not allowed to visit him because of the hospital’s visitor policy.

“He’s everything to our family and he should have been surrounded by people he loved,” one of his grandchildren told Fox.