As a provider of nursing home care and other services to more than 9,000 seniors and people with disabilities in New York City, ArchCare had to think out of the box when COVID first hit.
The healthcare system, operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, launched an ambitious and comprehensive infection control program called PROTECT. Now that the third year of living with COVID has been pressurized by rising cases of flu and RSV, the organization is leaning even more heavily on the principles it adopted during the pandemic.
Investing in prevention and control measures and making staff feel empowered will remain key efforts for ArchCare, and they should too for other providers, warns Walid Michelen, MD, senior vice president of Clinical Planning and Innovation and Chief Medical Officer at ArchCare.
“Infectious diseases are always happening in nursing homes … so we have to maintain that vigilance,” he says. “With the increase in travel worldwide and human encroachment into uncharted lands, we at ArchCare think we’re going to be getting a pandemic every four to five years. Something new is always going to be popping up.”
Vaccination campaigns and continued masking are just the start.
In this useful episode hosted by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News Senior Editor Kimberly Marselas, learn what more your organization can do to stay ahead of the latest threats.
