No Patient Left Alone Act (SB 988)

• Requires hospitals, nursing homes, hospice facilities, assisted living facilities, developmental disabilities centers, and intermediate care facilities to establish in-person visitation policies and procedures within 30 days of the act's effective date
• Allows residents, clients, or patients to designate an essential caregiver (family member, friend, guardian, or other individual) who must be permitted at least 2 hours of daily in-person visitation in addition to other authorized visitation
• Mandates in-person visitation in specific circumstances including end-of-life situations, childbirth, pediatric patients, major medical decisions, emotional distress, and residents struggling with environmental changes
• Prohibits safety-related visitor policies from being more stringent than those applied to the provider's own staff and bars requiring visitors to show proof of vaccination or immunization; must allow consensual physical contact between visitors and patients
• Requires providers to post visitation policies on their website homepage within 24 hours, submit policies to the Agency for Health Care Administration during licensure events, and make them available for agency review upon request