New procedure helps to restart hospital visits by CU retirees

This past winter, the hospital visitors program at Cayuga Medical Center, created by the late Rev. Jack Lewis, former director of Cornell United Religious Work, was named in Lewis' memory.

The program is sponsored, jointly, by the Cornell Retirees Association (CRA) and the Cornell Association of Professors Emeriti (CAPE) and it is supported by Cornell's Office of Human Resources.

Cornell affiliated students, staff, faculty, retirees and family members have for more than 20 years appreciated the friendly hospital visits made by Cornell retirees. In recent years, more than 3,000 visits have occurred annually. Visitors simply let patients know that they are being thought of and are offered copies of the Cornell Chronicle and Cornell Daily Sun when they are published. Administrators of the program say the response from those receiving visits has been enthusiastic, almost without exception. The visitors represent a broad cross-section of Cornell faculty emeriti, retired staff and spouses of retirees. Two individuals are scheduled to make visits daily, Monday through Friday.

However, in April of this year, the program virtually came to a halt as the result of new legislation designed to protect patient privacy, which precluded the hospital from providing information identifying patients' Cornell affiliations. Hospital administrators have now developed a procedure consistent with the privacy requirements that will allow patients to indicate their desire to be visited.

To get the program back on track and for patients to indicate their preference to receive these visits, newly admitted patients need to respond affirmatively to a question in the initial nurses' assessment: "Would you like to be visited by a Cornell-Jack Lewis visitor?" A "yes" response will provide the visitors with the name and room number of that patient. A daily visit, Monday through Friday, will then occur for the duration of the patient's hospital stay.

For further information on the hospital visitors program, contact Bill Paleen at 257-6038 or wpp1@cornell.edu.