Illinois hospitals put in place visitor restrictions

Illinois hospitals across the state are implementing a near-total ban on visitors as COVID-19 cases tick up. Several of the new restrictions follow Gov. JB Pritzker’s stay-at-home order, which started Saturday.

Hospital Sisters Health System and Memorial Health System announced Friday in a joint statement that, effective immediately, they would no longer allow visitors at any of their nine central Illinois hospitals. Exceptions would include one support person for a patient undergoing surgery or in the maternity department.

“Along with many other hospitals across the nation, we are taking this step to keep our patients, colleagues and community as safe as possible,” HSHS Illinois president and CEO E.J. Kuiper said.

Southern Illinois Healthcare announced Monday morning that it too would suspend visitation at all of its facilities until further notice, with few exceptions in “extraordinary circumstances.”

A spokeswoman for Urbana’s Carle Health told Health News Illinois last Friday that it was no longer allowing visitors at their hospitals, as well as limiting visitors at their clinics.

A spokeswoman for OSF HealthCare told Health News Illinois Monday that it would be up to the system’s 14 hospitals to set their own visitor’s policies, but that each has some sort of restrictions in place.

BJC HealthCare implemented a “no visitors” policy on Monday, and SSM Health announced Sunday that it would suspend visits throughout the system.

Blessing Health System announced last week it would restrict visitors, as did UI Health.

Many Chicago-area hospitals announced similar restrictive visitors policies last week. Among those are Advocate Aurora Health, AMITA Health, Rush University Medical Center, the University of Chicago Medical Center and Ingalls Memorial Hospital, Loyola Medicine, Lurie Children’s Hospital, Cook County Health, Edward-Elmhurst Health, Sinai Health System, Mercyhealth, NorthShore University HealthSystem and Northwestern Medicine.

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