{"id":45049,"date":"2021-08-20T22:47:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-21T04:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-health-system-increasing-visitor-restrictions\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:23:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:23:01","slug":"southwest-health-system-increasing-visitor-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-health-system-increasing-visitor-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Health System increasing visitor restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Southwest
Southwest Health System and the Montezuma County Hospital District are hosting an open house on June 4 from 6-8 p.m.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Southwest Health System released notice this week that its facilities will return to implementing stricter visitor policies.<\/p>\n

Starting Monday, all patients, except for those testing positive for COVID-19, will be allowed one screened, designated visitor, according to an SHS announcement Wednesday on Facebook.<\/p>\n

Currently, there are less than five positive cases at the hospital, said Clifford Rivard, public information officer at SHS.<\/p>\n

SHS did not make any alteration to its COVID-19 plan, he said.<\/p>\n

However, he said that if Southwest Memorial Hospital reaches about five total admitted patients with the virus, more staff members will be called to support the COVID-19 unit.<\/p>\n

Visiting hours will remain the same \u2014 noon to 8 p.m.<\/p>\n

Visitors won\u2019t be permitted to travel around the hospital solo \u2014 even to the cafeteria, he said.<\/p>\n

Patients may enter only through the hospital\u2019s main entrance, emergency room and medical office building.<\/p>\n

Companions also will be required to enter and exit the building through the entrance nearest the service being administered, he said.<\/p>\n

SHS reopened its drive-thru virus testing Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that, with the surge in our testing alone, going from somewhere around five tests a day to well over 40 \u2014 and I think we started this week, Monday and Tuesday alone, we did about 200 tests \u2014 that\u2019s why we kind of reopened up our our drive-thru testing,\u201d Rivard said.<\/p>\n

Drive-thru swabbing will be available Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m, although tests will not be processed on Fridays.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s faster to access test results through the patient portal on SHS\u2019 website, Rivard said.<\/p>\n

Employees also will be required to self-check their temperature every day starting Monday, and they will wear stickers with their temperatures listed, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust do our part to show that we\u2019re just being as cautious as possible,\u201d said Rivard.<\/p>\n

The Wednesday announcement informed the public that the hospital concierge will perform temperature checks and all visitors over the age of two must wear masks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drive-thru testing is back, along with visitor restrictions and staff temperature checks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,28,61,167,29,210],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-health","tag-local-news-lead","tag-newsletter","tag-southwest-health-system"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86330,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45049\/revisions\/86330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45049"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}