Purpose Recent events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic as well as frequent natural disasters have forced change in the workflow of medical facilities. The necessity to maintain social distancing, preserve resources and streamline workflow has severely limited the ability for visitation for families, loved ones, or caretakers of admitted or hospitalized patients. However, modern health practices encourage and require providing information and awareness to the patient’s families. The purpose of this policy is to provide guidelines on implementation of a process to maintain communication with families of hospitalized patients, during periods of social distancing, natural disasters, pandemics, and other situations where visitation is prohibited or discouraged. Policy Family-centered care which allows for families, patients and the healthcare team to collaborate is threatened during events that limit visitation. Typical strategies which typically include open family presence by the bedside and structured communication and education are lacking, which may not prepare families for critical decision-making roles and cause anxiety. Restrictions on family presence, should NOT undermine adherence to family-centered care (Hart et al., 2020). Facilities should apply alternatives for direct communication between patients, families, and healthcare teams using remote communications technology including but not limited to telephone or internet connection which will allow for audio or video calls (CDC, 2020). The objective is to enable communication and provision of telehealth through remote communications with the goals of 1) establishing collaboration between family members and healthcare team; 2) maintaining family integrity; and 3) respecting the role of family members as care partners (Hart et al., 2020). Areas of Responsibility Admission  1. Patients and families should be made aware of restrictive policies on visitation.  2. Public-facing material should be available on the facility website regarding remote communication policies, establishing communication, and link to finding places with internet connection/software for communication if not available (important for certain low-income or rural communities).  3. Inpatient clinical teams should develop a communication plan with patients and family members after admission. Clinicians are encouraged to identify and mitigate barriers to communication.  4. Primary family contact should be established who is ideally the legal health care decision-maker in case the patient deteriorates (Hart et al., 2020). Hospitalization  1. Structured and predictable communication should occur based on a planned schedule, at least once per 3 days (preferably daily). Proactive outreach is encouraged.  2. Videoconferencing is preferable as it improves emotional connection through facial expressions and nonverbal communication.  3. Clinical staff should be unburdened from non-essential training and documentation responsibilities to provide time for telehealth education and communication with families.  4. Care delivery and the requirement for communication may result in reinterpretation of roles within multidisciplinary teams as human resources ar