EDITORIAL: Pa. would do well to mimic Maryland law
When members of Montoursville Area High School’s Class of 1966 gather this weekend for their 55th school reunion, they no doubt will pay homage to Gloria Lewis, a former history teacher at the school.
Members of the class still write messages on their Facebook page about what a great teacher Lewis was and how she had impacted their lives, according to her daughter, Karen Lewis Young, who also graduated from Montoursville and now lives in Maryland where she is a delegate in the state legislature.
Now, Lewis, who died in December of COVID-19, will continue to have a positive impact in the lives of people in Maryland after her daughter was able to craft a bill named in her mother’s honor that was approved this year.
The Gloria Daytz Lewis Act requires the Maryland Department of Health to develop guidelines relating to restrictions on personal and compassionate care visitation in nursing homes.
Essentially, the bill is aimed at easing a problem experienced by many people in many states, including Pennsylvania, in which people were cut off from dying loved ones in nursing facilities because of pandemic restrictions.
Those restrictions, Young found, went beyond the pandemic guidelines spelled out by the Centers for Disease Control. Nonetheless, Young had to put up a fight and prove that the guidelines allowed for compassionate care visitation.
“It took a while and a lot of resources and a lot of reinforcement to convince them,” Young told the Sun-Gazette. “I thought, wow, I’m not exactly a shy person. I’m a state legislator and if I have to fight this battle, what are other families doing?”
That’s a very good question.
We believe other families, including a fair share in our area, have struggled while loved ones in nursing homes were cut off.
That said, we believe Pennsylvania would do well to pass its own piece of legislation much like the Gloria Daytz Lewis Act and extend this same compassion to residents of the Keystone State.