Visiting Hours & Policies

Maimonides Medical Center encourages active participation of immediate family or their designees in the care of our patients. Therefore, our visiting policies are designed to enhance the quality of visits, while promoting the comfort of patients, respecting their privacy and increasing their safety. Please be sure to speak to the unit staff if you have any questions. Also, please feel free to contact a Patient Representative at hospital extension 7212. If calling from outside Maimonides, (718) 283-7212. Our goals are to encourage:

• A quiet, healing environment
• Respect for all patients
• Respect for the working environment of hospital personnel

Visitors, including children, are guests and the responsibility of the patient in the hospital environment.

Anyone with a fever, runny nose, flu, upset stomach, wound infection or other symptoms of illness and anyone exposed to chicken pox or other communicable disease such as influenza may not come into the hospital units. For Children’s Hospital (pediatric) units, parents who are sick should call the Primary Nurse, Nurse Practitioner or Doctor.

All family members and visitors must thoroughly wash their hands or disinfect with Purell, as soon as they enter the hospital unit. Good hand washing is important to stop the spread of germs. Our staff and doctors will be washing their hands or using the Purell waterless hand wash before and after treating the patient. For your health, and the patient’s and visitor’s health, please remember to wash your hands after using the bathroom, changing diapers, before and after eating, when leaving the patient room and whenever hands are visibly soiled. You may also use the Purell dispensers that you will find near bedsides and around the unit.

There will be times when parents and visitors are asked to leave the unit, for example, sometimes during medical procedures and at times when we need to guarantee privacy and confidentiality. The Hospital Epidemiologist has the authority to restrict visiting due to communicable outbreaks such as influenza. If visiting is not permitted at times when a unit would normally permit visiting, a staff member will explain the reason.

• General unit visiting hours are 11:00 am 9:30 pm however, visiting guidelines in specialty areas vary. These variations will be discussed at the time of admission.
• For security reasons, between 9:30 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. prior to authorizing the visitor to leave the Information Desk, Security will call the Patient Care Area for authorization to send up visitors. Authorized visitors will be required to sign into Security’s log book and will be issued a visitor’s sticker identifying the building in which visiting is authorized.
• As much as possible, the hospital should be a place for rest and recovery. To encourage that, we limit the number of people at the patient’s bedside, (including children where children are authorized visitors). Where overnight visiting is permitted, overnight visiting is limited to one person.