Alyssa Young, left, a registered nurse on the staff of Home Health Hospice Care, screens a visitor to the agency's Community Hospice House this week. Nurses, other staff and volunteers have been stepping up to meet the challenges presented by the COVID-19 virus threat, its leaders said. Courtesy photo

MERRIMACK – On any given day, Home Health & Hospice Care nurses and other caregivers bring in-home care to roughly 450 patients in two dozen communities in the region, and tend to around 140 additional patients in nursing facilities and in hospice care.

In many cases, the visits, whether in a patient’s home or at their bedside, opened up a comfortable routine for both caregiver and patient.

But these days, routines are no longer, having been pushed aside by what the agency’s president and CEO calls “a time of apprehension … not only for the public and our patients, but for our caregivers as well.”

Still, those caregivers, like their many counterparts across the region, nation and around the world, are working through the nagging sense of uneasiness that inevitably accompanies a pervasive threat like that posed by the COVID-19 virus.

“I’ve got to say, they’ve been wonderful,” president and CEO John Getts said. “They’re learning the safety protocols related to the virus, then educating their patients about safety measures, things that they can do to reduce the risk,” he said.

The screening begins with the caregivers themselves, and they in turn screen patients before they enter their homes or the rooms of those currently in care facilities.

The agency has been in “constant contact” with local hospitals, Getts said, as they undertake the process of moving stable patients to their homes to free up hospital beds for patients whose conditions are considered unstable.

Keeping in stock supplies of all kinds has, not surprisingly, been a challenge, Getts said, but the agency is faring better than some.

“We’ve been putting out requests (for supplies), like the hospitals are doing, and we’ve been very fortunate,” he said, referring to donations they’ve received from various sources, such as Merrimack police and Rivier University.

Quantities of hand sanitizer, Getts said, have been donated by the Nashua-based brewery Djinn Spirits, which switched part of its operation to “brewing” the sanitizer. Similarly, Anheuser-Busch has chipped in, and Trader Joe’s has donated items as well.

Caregivers have also made more use of technology in caring for their patients, Getts said. “They’ve been doing ‘telephonic visits’ when possible, sometimes instead of a personal visit, and sometimes in addition to a visit.”

For additional information on the steps the agency has taken in response to the COVID-19 threat, including the safety protocols it has put in place. go to www.hhhc.org.

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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