Dear Cardinal Residents and Family Members,
We hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful spring weather and had a good time at our Country and Western Spirit Day yesterday. We are still monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely which continues to change daily. As many of you may have heard, a few nursing homes across the state have reported multiple confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 in their facilities. Governor Roy Cooper provided an update on this growing concern yesterday during his daily press conference. During his press conference, Governor Cooper outlined more guidelines and protocol for nursing homes to implement immediately. The Cardinal at North Hills had already implemented this new protocol in The Pines in previous weeks.
New protocol announced yesterday includes the following:
• All nursing homes and similar settings’ associates must always wear a mask when providing care to a resident.
• All communal areas in skilled nursing homes must be closed. (This does not apply to Independent Living currently).
• Daily health screening of all residents and associates.
In addition to the protocol listed above, we at The Cardinal screen every associate and essential healthcare worker entering the community each time they report to work. Each person being screened has their temperature taken and is asked a series of questions. Once a person has passed the screening process, they are always required to wear a mask in the community and wear gloves in some instances depending on the task they are completing.
Dining
Dining Services will be implementing a new system for receiving Independent Living Residents’ menu selections for lunch and dinner tomorrow. Team members will drop off menus for the following day during the lunch time meal service. We are asking residents to make their selections for lunch and dinner for the next day. A dining services associate will pick up these menus during the dinner meal delivery service. We are doing this to better prepare the appropriate number of meals ordered and eliminate unnecessary waste. We will be switching over to our re-useable to-go containers as soon as the shipment arrives. Once we implement the new system, we ask residents to please rinse the containers and place them in a bag that we provide outside their door for dining services to collect. Containers will be collected at 9:00am and 2:00pm.
As a reminder, Easter Lunch will be the only meal served on Sunday. This menu will be a special Easter Lunch with many traditional options. Residents may even catch a glimpse of the Easter Bunny hopping down the hallways during the meal delivery. Please join us in the main Courtyard by the flagpole for Hymns with Stefan tomorrow, Friday April 10th at 2:00pm. Next Wednesday, April 15th “The Cardinal Strawberry Patch” will personally deliver a quart of freshly picked, locally grown strawberries for everyone to enjoy. Finally, next Friday, April 17th is School Spirit Day. Please dress in your favorite school colors or old letterman jacket and show your school spirit! Cardinal associates are busy preparing some team cheers to entertain you with. More information and event specifics will follow.
Videos
This week we began posting video links to daily devotional videos on K4 and we wanted to share these links with you in this letter. We have many associates and friends of The Cardinal who have been eager to share their thoughts and inspiration with you and we hope you enjoy these videos. We are also including a link to a video message to our residents from Kisco President and CEO, Andy Kohlberg.
Please see the links below.
Message from Kisco Senior Living’s President and CEO, Andy Kohlberg
Maundy Thursday with Cassandra Griffo
As a final reminder, we are not allowing ANY visitors at this time to ensure the health and safety of our residents. With the current situation unfolding in North Carolina nursing homes and similar communities right now, we simply cannot take that risk. We will be speaking with any resident who violates this policy and addressing it with them directly. Mary Casey, Assistant Executive Director, is Manager on Duty this Saturday, April 11th and Chris Jamgochian, Culinary Services Director, will be Manager on Duty Sunday, April 12th. We hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and as always, please do not hesitate to reach out to Mary Casey or me with any questions, comments or concerns.
Sincerely,
Tom Ford, Executive Director