OPINION: Even during a pandemic, hospitals must make family visits and communication the standard of care

Even in a pandemic, hospitals must find ways to allow family visits - STAT As the nation copes with Covid-19, it sorely needs a plan to allow family visits to and communication with hospitalized loved ones. Patrick Skerrett STAT

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 370,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, many of them alone, isolated from those who love them by hospital policies cutting off family visits.

As the virus continues its relentless spread across the country, the next few months may be the deadliest ones we’ve seen. And as hospitals once again begin to shut their doors to visitors, we are in dire need of national leadership around visitor policies and medical communication with patients and families.

Much has been said about preventable deaths related to Covid-19. Little has been said about preventable suffering. We may today be better prepared to diagnose and treat the disease than we were in the spring, but we are no better prepared to address the collective trauma of Covid-19 patients being separated from their families. Family presence at the bedside, along with regular communication between health care providers and their patients and families, are not indulgences — they need to be part of the standard of care.

As members of a palliative care team embedded during the spring in Covid-19 intensive care units at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, we have seen firsthand the need for improved visitor and communication policies. We were there to provide the three pillars of palliative care: expert management of symptoms such as shortness of breath and pain, psychosocial support for patients and families, and assistance with difficult medical decisions. ...

As the nation braces for the coming months, we need a national strategy to mitigate this suffering. All hospitals must create programs to regularly allow families to see and talk to their loved ones throughout their hospitalization. The inequitable chaos of the status quo — usually a nurse scrambling to arrange a video chat, often on her or his personal phone — is unacceptable. Nearly 10 months into the pandemic, we should not still be trying to figure this out.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should create transparent, evidence-based standards for visitor policies that are tied to rates of viral spread. To be sure, with skyrocketing infections across the country, we cannot return to pre-Covid-19 visitation rules until we have widespread public vaccination. We must protect frontline health care workers, patients, and visitors. But with a concerted effort and national leadership, we could make visitation safer, less restricted, and more equitable....