Consistent with Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s commitment to help prevent potential community spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), we are implementing visitor restrictions for the protection of our patients, visitors and workforce. To continue providing the safest care environment, temporary updates to our visitor policies have been made:

• Limit of one visitor per patient for both inpatient and ambulatory care
  • This includes all hospital, physician clinic, and emergency department visits
• Visitors may be screened for flu-like symptoms, such as fever, cough or sore throat. Any visitor with obvious signs of illness will be asked to kindly leave.
• No visitors under the age of 18 will be allowed during this time, since young people are potential infectors without necessarily being ill themselves.
• Care teams will make exceptions in specific circumstances such as:
  • End-of-life care
  • Two parents or guardians for each pediatric patient
  • Two visitors for each labor and delivery patient
  • Disruptive behavior patients
• We are discontinuing all public use of our conference rooms effective immediately until future notice. This includes cancelling events open to the public and community groups.
• The NCH cafeteria will be closed to the public and will serve employees only with ID badges

“While there have been no cases of COVID-19 infections on the island, we have an obligation to minimize the risk to our patients and to our staff. We feel it is vitally important to protect our patients and our workforce so that they can be ready and available to provide care to our community,” said Gary Shaw, President and CEO of Nantucket Cottage Hospital.

We recognize the valuable role that family members and visitors play in the healing process and appreciate that these restrictions may cause challenges for our patients and their families. We thank the community in advance for its understanding and adherence to these policies as part of our continued efforts to keep our patients, visitors and workforce protected and healthy during this time. Nantucket Cottage Hospital will continue monitoring and evaluating the situation, while acting in the best interest of our patients and employees. We ask for the community’s understanding and cooperation and encourage residents to check the Nantucket Cottage Hospital website www.nantuckethospital.org and NCH social media pages for further updates.