Nursing homes Category Archives — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

November 22, 2020

Neglect-and-abuse deaths send nursing homes’ pandemic toll from bad to worse

The coronavirus pandemic’s terrible toll on nursing homes and other long-term care facilities may be much worse than now estimated, as resident advocates, watchdog groups, and experts tally “excess deaths” in the facilities — perhaps one additional casualty beyond any two formally attributed to Covid-19.

These fatalities are unacceptable, resulting from frantic and low-paid health workers’ inability to care for the aged, injured, and chronically ill infected with the coronavirus while also dealing with the needs of people so frail they require institutionalization. It’s tough reading, but here is what the Associated Press reported:

“As more than 90,000 of the nation’s long-term care residents have died in a pandemic that has pushed staffs to the limit, advocates for the elderly say a tandem wave of death separate from the virus has quietly claimed tens of thousands more, often because overburdened workers haven’t been able to give them the care they need. Nursing home watchdogs are being flooded with reports of residents kept in soiled diapers so long their skin peeled off, left with bedsores that cut to the bone, and allowed to wither away in starvation or thirst.

November 18, 2020

Grim reprise in nursing homes: four-fold infection hike and doubling deaths

by Patrick A. Malone

Coronavirus cases are spiking among residents and staff at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. They increased four-fold between May’s end and late October — even as deaths among the vulnerable also doubled, disturbing new data show.

Those are the findings of Rebecca Gorges and Tamara Konetzka, University of Chicago researchers who analyzed federal data at the request of the Associated Press. They focused on 20 states hard hit by the latest pandemic surge.

Konetzka said the data raise major questions about the Trump Administration’s efforts to safeguard the aged, ailing, and injured in institutional care by sheltering them from infections in their surround areas and increasing testing for residents and health workers. But Koentzka, an expert on long-term care, told the AP this about such a plan:

November 11, 2020

Caregiver staffing a key issue in shielding vulnerable in nursing facilities and in their own homes

by Patrick A. Malone

Nursing homes put their residents at heightened health risks by scrimping on personnel costs and failing to deal with significant staffing shortfalls, especially as the coronavirus inflicted some of its highest death and infection tolls on the elderly, sick, and injured in long-term care, media investigations have found.

The profit-focus by health providers is not unique, and it has put huge burdens on poorly paid, lightly trained, and over worked home health aides. They have toiled to keep the vulnerable out of institutional care, even as the agencies that employ them give them little support.

Here is what the Wall Street Journal reported about long-term care facilities, based on its “analysis of payroll-based daily staffing data released … by the Medicare agency … [for hundreds of] nursing homes that reported to the federal government virus-related deaths in the first half of 2020″:

November 8, 2020

As nation focused on vote tallies, coronavirus cases and deaths kept soaring

by Patrick A. Malone

While Americans have been riveted for days about incremental shifts in election results, other confounding numbers raced ever higher and into worrisome places. Just consider these numbers: 128,000, 9.6 million plus, and 235,000 and more.

“Covid, covid, covid. By the way, on Nov. 4 you won’t hear about it anymore,” President Trump asserted during his closing re-election campaign rallies.

If only. The nation’s coronavirus pandemic is unchecked and showing signs of worsening, bigly, with records shattering on consecutive days for infections diagnosed: 100,000 on Nov. 4, 120,000 on Nov. 5, and 128,000 on Nov. 6.

November 5, 2020

As virus burned through nursing homes, inspectors cleared most of infection violations

by Patrick A. Malone

Disturbing new data shows that a much-promoted plan by federal watchdogs to protect vulnerable residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities from Covid-19 resulted in dismal outcomes, with inspectors dispatched by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services largely dismissing infection-control concerns as the deadly pandemic raged.

“During the first six months of the crisis [inspectors] cleared nearly 8 in 10 nursing homes of any infection-control violations,” even as tens of thousands of facility residents were infected and died from the coronavirus, the Washington Post reported.

The newspaper’s investigation found this:

October 28, 2020

Vulnerable, especially in nursing homes, unsafe in covid’s community spread

by Patrick A. Malone

Audiences laugh when Sancho Panza, a sage but servile character in the musical “Man of La Mancha,” observes that “whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it’s bad for the pitcher.” A paraphrase of that aphorism — regarding community spread of the coronavirus and the elderly, particularly those in nursing homes — might be sadly apt these days.

From Norton, Kansas, to La Crosse, Wis., public health officials and owners and operators of long-term care facilities are watching with dread the predicted Covid-19 surge occurring in communities across the country and surrounding the aged, sick, and injured in institutions.

And while some extreme theorists — including in the White House — argue for a pandemic response that claims the vulnerable can be protected (say, in nursing homes) while the healthy should, doggone it, just get sick with the coronavirus and get it over with, common sense and evidence are laying waste to the risky “let’s let Covid-19 blaze so herd immunity takes effect” theory.

October 23, 2020

For nursing homes, a quarter lack PPE, half have infected staff, study finds

by Patrick A. Malone

For residents of nursing homes and their loved ones, new and disturbing information has come out on long-term care facilities’ persistent failure to safeguard the vulnerable from the coronavirus that has killed tens of thousands of the institutionalized and infected hundreds of thousands of them and their caregivers.

Six months after the pandemic exploded across the country, more than a quarter of nursing homes nationwide are “reporting shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and staff, and almost half have staff infected with Covid-19,” according to the AARP, the country’s largest advocacy group for older Americans.

The organization based its finding on its scrutiny of federal data, reporting:

October 13, 2020

Nevada offers key lessons in challenge to U.S. virus tests for nursing homes

by Patrick A. Malone

The federal agency that regulates nursing homes and other long-term care facilities not only has cracked down on them with tough new requirements for coronavirus testing of their staff. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services also has flogged its plan to provide facilities with testing equipment and sample tests.

While owners and operators have grumbled about the whole process, the state of Nevada has gone a step further: Enough, its health officials have decided. They briefly halted as unacceptable the CMS tests for the virus because they say they are flawed and may put nursing home residents at risk.

Besides casting yet more doubt on CMS’s poor pandemic response with long-term care facilities, Nevada’s balk — rescinded abruptly after federal threat — may offer an important take-away to members of the public, already flooded with findings about the novel coronavirus:

October 6, 2020

Maryland adds testing and leads area in allowing nursing homes to re-open

by Patrick A. Malone

Maryland will take the lead among states in the area in re-opening nursing homes and other long-term care facilities from months of coronavirus-related closures to family members, guests, and other visitors.

Gov. Larry Hogan (shown, right) acted as the state, for the first time in months, reported that October started with zero Covid-19 fatalities and 76 of Maryland’s 227 nursing homes had active coronavirus cases — down from 130 on Aug. 5, the Washington Post reported.

After struggling through some of the worst outbreaks in long-term facilities in the area, Maryland will put significant resources into safeguarding nursing homes as they reopen, Hogan said.

September 29, 2020

Senate Democrats rip White House and GOP for inaction on nursing homes

by Patrick A. Malone

The White House and Senate Republicans have failed to protect more than 1.3 million Americans in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, with persistent inaction contributing to the rising toll of Covid-19 deaths and infections among the institutionalized — months after the crisis in long-term care exploded into the public consciousness.

Those are the new findings of Bob Casey and Ron Wyden, two ranking Democratic U.S. senators serving on the Aging and Finance committees, respectively. They issued their harsh criticisms and a minority staff report they requested and based on information from the Trump Administration. The Washington Post quoted Casey:

“This report lays bare the devastating cost that American families have paid as a result of the Trump administration’s incompetency and Republican inaction. The crisis in our nursing homes, which residents and workers and their families are experiencing every day, demands immediate action.”