ORLANDO, Fla. — A new executive order signed September 1 lifted some restrictions on visits to nursing homes and similar long-term care facilities that had been in place since March due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

But some families say facilities aren’t moving quickly enough to let them back in.

“It’s been six long months,” said Mary Daniel, a caregiver who serves on the task force Governor Ron DeSantis created to advise on the reopening of long-term care facilities. 

Daniel, who got a dishwashing job at the facility where her husband lives during the pandemic so she could see him, said some facilities are not interpreting the executive order correctly.

“Facilities are making their own rules,” Daniel said. “They’re not following the rules as they’ve been written.”

The order states that essential or compassionate caregivers — people who have been designated by residents or their representatives to provide services, care and/or emotional support — are now permitted to visit the facilities.

Up to two of each type of caregiver per resident are permitted, the order states.

But some facilities are delaying the communication of new protocols to families, leading to confusion. In some cases, requests from family members to be added to residents’s care plans as caregivers have been outright denied.

That’s the case for Dennis Dulniak, whose wife Nancy lives at Arden Courts of Winter Springs, a memory care facility. He said he’s made two requests to be a designated caregiver since the executive order passed, and both have been denied.

“I want to be there with her,” Dulniak said. “I want to be there to hold her hand, to give her a hug. To provide her that emotional support that only a spouse can.”

Daniel said some facilities appear to be prioritizing how to comply with the order’s new protocols for general visitation above those for essential and compassionate caregivers. 

“There is a control factor here,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s a deliberate effort to keep us out, and it’s really, really frustrating.”

On Wednesday, the Agency for Health Care Administration issued a clarification to the order that Daniel said was mass-emailed to facilities across the state.

The document instructs long-term care facilities to “immediately implement procedures to enable Essential Caregivers and Compassionate Care visitors to visit your residents.”

Dulniak said March 12 was the last time he got to visit his wife in person. At that time, he had no idea a lockdown was about to begin.

Since that day, Dulniak said Arden Courts granted him one 90-minute window visit with Nancy for their 47th anniversary. He’s also done two “drive-by” visits, for which staff brought Nancy out to the front of the building while Dunliak sat in his car.

Dulniak said these visits clearly confused his wife. 

“I'm encouraged that Arden Courts is taking some action,” Dulniak said. “But yet, these delays are not satisfying enough.”

Daniel acknowledged that some progress, at least, is better than none. Some families have posted on the public Facebook group she manages, “Florida Caregivers For Compromise.”

“We are seeing progress, there’s no question about that,” Daniel said. “I am seeing pictures of hugs on the Facebook page, and it allows me to kind of breathe a sigh of relief and say that the biggest part of our mission has been completed. And that makes us all really happy.”

Still, until essential and compassionate caregiver designations can be made quickly and readily available to the friends and family members who qualify for it, families are left in the lurch.

“It's time us compassionate caregivers got in and actually gave our loved ones a true hug,” Dulniak said.

Molly Duerig is a Report for America corps member who is covering Affordable Housing for Spectrum News 13. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.