Friends or Family in the Hospital? E-Visit!

Someone you love is in the hospital, recovering from COVID-19 or another health condition. You want to see them, but, because of COVID restrictions, you can’t enter the hospital. What now?

Now there’s E-Visitation. Through a partnership with NineStar Connect, you can visit your loved ones at Hancock Regional Hospital without coming inside.

During this time, we’re doing everything we can to help protect the health of our community—and staying in touch with patients, even from a distance, can be an important part of the healing process.

“We know that patients do better in the hospital when they’re visited by family and friends,” said Adam Wilhelm, director of nursing administration at Hancock Regional Hospital. “Being able to see a friendly face or talk to a loved one can make a big difference in their care.”

How E-Visitation works

NineStar Connect worked to extend our wifi network beyond the hospital walls and into the parking lot—so you can visit patients without leaving your car. Here’s how it works:

• Beginning Saturday, March 28 call us at 317.468.4800 between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. to schedule your e-visit.
• At your appointed time, pull into the valet parking area in front of Hancock Regional Hospital’s main entrance. We’ll bring you an iPad—and a nurse will bring another iPad to your loved one so you can visit.
• E-visits for families are 15 minutes long and will take place from 2 – 4 p.m. Pastoral care visits are also 15 minutes and are available from 4 – 5 p.m.

Other ways you can connect

If you can connect with your loved one in the hospital via Facetime, Skype, or another video conferencing service on your own mobile devices, please feel free to do so at your leisure—no appointments necessary! But not everyone has the resources to connect electronically from home. For those people, E-Visitation is a great option.

Wilhelm said E-Visitation wouldn’t have been possible without NineStar Connect’s partnership.

“We’ve partnered with NineStar Connect in our community for years. We reached out for help, and they were able to extend our wifi network into our parking lot at a moment’s notice so that we could offer this to our patients and their families and friends,” he said.

It’s great to see a community come together in a time of need. Stay healthy—and stay up to date by visiting HancockRegional.org/coronavirus regularly.