NC Senate votes to guarantee patients the right to visitors, even during a pandemic
A North Carolina bill that would allow people to visit patients in hospitals and nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic and future emergencies passed the state Senate on Wednesday.
Senate Bill 191, the No Patient Left Alone Act, ensures patient visitation rights regardless of a declared disaster or state of emergency.
Sen. Warren Daniel, a Morganton Republican and the bill’s sponsor, said that loved ones have had to wait in a car or a parking lot outside buildings while their dying family members inside were left alone.
“This bill is a small step making sure this won’t happen again in our state,” Daniel said before the vote Wednesday. It passed 40-9.
Bill Lamb, board chair of Friends of Residents in Long Term Care, a Raleigh-based nonprofit, told The News & Observer that the bill is looking ahead to future situations, not just the COVID-19 pandemic of the past year.
“This pandemic has been really hard not just on [long-term care] residents but their families as well. We’ve been saying over and over again that family and loved ones are an integral part of the care system. Keeping them out of long-term care facilities, you’re doing them harm,” Lamb said. He said that they understand the need to protect residents from the coronavirus, but there are other issues — for example, residents with dementia or depression not seeing visitors.
There are some restrictions on visitations now. Lamb said the state’s rules lagged behind the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year.
“Particularly early on, it was difficult to know what to do. We faced something we hadn’t faced before,” Lamb said about the pandemic. “All in all, I think [the state Department of Health and Human Services] has tried to be responsive in a tough situation. But they’ve been pretty conservative in delineating visitation rights,” he said.
Visitors, penalties for violations
The bill states that “the COVID-19 pandemic has caused great uncertainty and anxiety across our State and has significantly affected patients and residents in healthcare facilities.”
The bill also calls for DHHS to impose civil penalties for violations. The penalty would be at least $500 each time a patient visitation was denied. Hospitals would first have 24 hours to allow visitation before the penalty is imposed.
Several hospitals have eased restrictions, including Duke Health recently, The News & Observer previously reported.
During the 2020 summer session, Sen. Joyce Krawiec was a sponsor of a similar bill that passed the Senate but failed to pass in the House at nearly midnight on June 25. Krawiec said then that while many hospitals were already allowing a single visitor, the bill would guarantee it.
“It is time for us to make certain that no one dies alone,” Krawiec said then.
That bill called out a patient’s right to have at least one “support person,” but the bill that advanced Wednesday calls for allowing patients to “receive visitors to the fullest extent permitted” by various other laws and rules.
This version of the bill added nursing home visitation, too.
Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, a Raleigh Democrat and Senate Democratic whip, was one of the “no” votes.
“While I share real concerns expressed by Sen. Daniel about patient care, this bill remains problematic because it ties the hands of the Department of Health and Human Services and local health departments if we experience a resurgence of the virus or any future virus that impacts our state,” Chaudhuri told The News & Observer.
“It’s critical these agencies be able to respond quickly — as they’ve done — during such a public health emergency,” he said.
The bill now goes to the House. Sen. Jim Perry, a Lenoir County Republican, said there could be more changes via amendments in the House before it would need to come back to the Senate again for a final vote.
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