April 21, 2020
To our residents, resident families, and team members:
In light of the continued impact of COVID-19 around the world and in our own individual communities, I am writing to update you on the precautionary health and safety measures that remain in place at Anthology Senior Living, as well as additional programs and protocols we have been implementing to further ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of our residents and team members.
The Socially Distanced Engagement plan that we shared updates on last week continues to be implemented, providing residents with daily activities to keep them mentally stimulated and physically active while practicing safe social distancing measures. The rollout of our Amazon Echo Dot program has also been successful at a number of our communities, giving residents who have opted in, easy access to news, weather, music, and other general topics. We are proud to be a leader in providing residents in senior living communities with safe ways to stay engaged during the COVID-19 pandemic, as highlighted last week in the Cleveland Jewish News. We are continuing to work with team members and residents to come up with new ways to keep residents engaged during this time. As a reminder, here are some of the measures that are continuing to be implemented from our last update:
- Extended the admission ban – to ensure that residents from outside our community do not bring the virus into our communities, we have extended the admissions ban by an additional week.
- Extended in-room quarantine – to help eliminate resident to resident transmission and reduce resident and staff exposure, the in-room quarantine has been extended by an additional two weeks.
- Team member appreciation – we have increased the hourly wage and expanded the PTO benefits for our team members to show how much we appreciate them. This wage increase and expanded benefits have been extended by an additional two weeks.
- Personal protective equipment (PPE) – we continue to receive large shipments of PPE at both the communities and our central inventory. We are seeing the supply chain begin to work again and delivery periods and prices shrink. PPE help to keep both our residents and team members safe.
We know that as this situation continues to lengthen, being unable to visit a loved one for this prolonged period can be very difficult. Keeping residents and their families connected is one of our key concerns, and we are continuing to explore new ways to do this. We encourage you to keep lines of communication open through phone, email, and video calls.
We continue to closely observe the COVID-19 trends in and within close proximity to our communities. As the new cases begin to decline and hopefully flatten the curve, we will begin to gradually ease the precautionary measures we have implemented. All decisions will be made considering the health and well being of our residents and team members as our True North.
We will continue to post updates on our website at www.anthologyseniorliving.com and through email to keep you informed. Should you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to the community Executive Director or email our corporate team at information@anthologyseniorliving.com.
This is a stressful and uncertain time, and we are continually thankful for the dedication of our Anthology team members and their commitment to deliver high-quality care and service to our residents. Additionally, we would like to extend our sincerest thanks to all our residents and family members who continue to rely on us and entrust us with the care of their loved ones, like Janet whose family is a part of our Rochester Hills community:
“What really makes it stand out is the staff that you employ and the time and attention that each of the med techs, caregivers, housekeeping, culinary staff, directors, management, front desk and the executive team give to the residents that live there. From the minute you walk through the doors there is a sense of family, community and commitment.”
We are so appreciative to all our residents, family members and team members for working with us to navigate this challenging time together.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Burke
President, Anthology Senior Living
NOTE: These guidelines apply to all Anthology senior living communities except Anthology of Tanglewood as the community is currently operating as an unlicensed 55+ community. Separate guidelines are in place for Anthology of Tanglewood.