Ritenour Rest Home and Augusta Health are working together to proactively address an emerging COVID situation at the assisted living facility in Staunton.
“We’ve developed a collaborative relationship to help with the care of patients with COVID infection at Ritenour Rest Home,” says Clint Merritt, MD, Chief Clinical Officer for Population Health at Augusta Health.“When we learned about a Covid patient at the Ritenour Rest Home, we connected with Ritenour’s staff to proactively provide support to them with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), COVID testing and education on infection control processes.”
To assist the Ritenour Rest Home and the Central Shenandoah Health District, Augusta Health is testing all residents and staff at the assisted living facility.A few weeks ago, Augusta Care Partners began providing proactive surveillance, PPE and social distancing guidance to long term care facilities in the Staunton-Augusta County-Waynesboro region to continue to flatten the curve and to reduce the number of COVID cases in the area.While Augusta Health and Augusta Care Partners are providing support and assistance to the facilities, we will not publically release details about particular COVID cases or the number of illnesses at a facility to protect the privacy of the residents and to keep strong collaboration with our partner facilities.
“We appreciate the response from Augusta Health and Augusta Care Partners,” says Lindsay Lowe, Administrator at Ritenour Rest Home.“The testing and support have been a great service to us.”
“Although this situation is a serious concern, it’s also been an affirming opportunity—Augusta Health, the Central Shenandoah Health District and Ritenour Rest Home are working closely together to care for patients in our community.We are thankful for the collaborative effort of everyone involved.The dedication and commitment from the Ritenour staff has been especially notable,” adds Dr. Merritt.