• Jonathan C Yeh, Ishwaria M Subbiah, Natasha Dhawan, Benjamin W Thompson, Zachary Hildner, Areeba Jawed, Eric Prommer, and Christian T Sinclair.
• Section of Palliative Care, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
• Support Care Cancer. 2021 Sep 1; 29 (9): 4895-4898.

PurposeFamily/caregiver visitation provides critical support for patients confronting cancer and is associated with positive outcomes. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought historic disruptions including widespread visitation restrictions. Here, we characterize in-depth the visitor policies of NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers (CCCs) and analyze geographic/temporal patterns across CCCs.MethodsThe public-facing CCC websites, including archived webpages, were reviewed to abstract initial visitation policies and revisions, including end-of-life (EoL) exceptions and timing of visitation restrictions relative to regional lockdowns. Chi-squared and Fisher's exact tests were employed to analyze associations between geographic region, timing, and severity of restrictions.ResultsMost CCCs (n=43, 86%) enacted visitation restrictions between March 15 and April 15, 2020. About half barred all visitors for COVID-negative inpatients (n=24, 48%) or outpatients (n=26, 52%). Most (n=36, 72%) prohibited visitors for patients with confirmed/suspected COVID-19. Most (n=40, 80%) published EoL exceptions but the specifics were highly variable. The median time from initial restrictions to government-mandated lockdowns was 1 day, with a wide range (25 days before to 26 days after). There was no association between timing of initial restrictions and geographic location (p=0.14) or severity of inpatient policies (p=1.0), even among centers in the same city. Outpatient policies published reactively (after lockdown) were more restrictive than those published proactively (p=0.04).ConclusionCCCs enacted strict but strikingly variable COVID-19 visitation restrictions, with important implications for patients/families seeking cancer care. A unified, evidence-based approach to visitation policies is needed to balance proven infection control measures with the needs of patients and families.© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

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