Visitation Guidance

---

Visitation can be conducted through different means based on a facility’s structure and residents’ needs, such as in resident rooms, dedicated visitation spaces, and outdoors. Regardless of how visits are conducted, certain core principles and best practices reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission: 

Please see New Jersey Department of Health & Human Services/CMS – Nursing Home Visitation – COVID-19 Memorandum (Revised 11/12/2021) 

• Visitors who have a positive viral test for COVID-19, symptoms of COVID-19, or currently meet the criteria for quarantine, should not enter the facility. Facilities should screen all who enter for these visitation exclusions.
• Hand hygiene (use of alcohol-based hand rub is preferred)
• Face covering or mask (covering mouth and nose) and physical distancing at least six feet between people, in accordance with CDC guidance
• Instructional signage throughout the facility and proper visitor education on COVID- 19 signs and symptoms, infection control precautions, other applicable facility practices (e.g., use of face covering or mask, specified entries, exits and routes to designated areas, hand hygiene)During indoor visitation, facilities should limit visitor movement in the facility. For example, visitors should not walk around different halls of the facility. Rather, they should go directly to the resident’s room or designated visitation area.Therefore, if a visitor, resident, or their representative is aware of the risks associated with visitation, and the visit occurs in a manner that does not place other residents at risk (e.g., in the resident’s room), the resident must be allowed to receive visitors as he/she chooses.Visitors who are unable to adhere to the core principles of COVID-19 infection prevention should not be permitted to visit or should be asked to leave.