Update 10.29.2020

Plymouth Place™ Friends and Family,

While we have communicated weekly with our residents and their families, it has been several months since our last public update. The wonderful news is that there hasn’t been a need for a public update – our community has had no new COVID cases among our resident population for 6 months. We have spent the last few months acclimating to our new normal, which has included a combination of socially-distant gatherings and virtual programming. Our residents’ and staff’s physical and emotional well-being has remained our highest priority.

If you have been following local news, you have undoubtedly seen that the rate of COVID-19 positive individuals has increased within our area. On Monday, in response to this increase, Region 10 (suburban Cook County) was elevated from a moderate to high risk of COVID-19 transmission.

How does this impact Plymouth Place? For long-term care communities, Tier 1 dictates restrictions on group gatherings, indoor visits, and operation of the beauty salon in higher levels of care. As such, effective immediately, Independent Living gatherings are limited to 25 people or less (subject to the size of the room), and gatherings in Assisted Living, Greg’s Place, and the Health Care Center are limited to 10 people or less (subject to the size of the room). We regret that beauty salon services for Assisted Living, Greg’s Place, and the Health Care Center will be temporarily suspended, and indoor visitation for all levels of living must be halted for the time being. We are in the midst of developing a revised visitation plan that meets regulatory requirements and expect to have additional details to share soon.

As cases increase in the outside community, we cannot let down our guard. As an extra measure to keep our residents and staff safe, any non-essential visits made by our residents outside of the community, regardless of length of time away, will require a period of quarantine and testing upon return to the building. Residents will not be required to be quarantined and tested after return from a routine doctor or dental appointment, but should they require a visit to the hospital, the quarantine and testing protocol will be followed.

With a goal of limiting the quarantine period as much as possible, we are thrilled to have been able to obtain the BinaxNOW™ rapid COVID test. Once the CDC schedules the necessary training for reporting measures, we will be able to transition to using this testing procedure.

We will keep our community apprised should additional mitigation measures be announced with everyone’s health and well-being our number one concern.

Stay safe and stay well,

Jay Biere
President/CEO