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

May 11, 2021

Big reconsideration under way for long-term care as coronavirus toll eases

Residents and their loved ones may have reached a major turning point with nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, agonizing as to whether the institutions really can provide safe, hygienic, and welcoming places for the vulnerable — or whether other, tough options must be considered.

Who can forget that that 132,000 elderly, injured, and seriously ill residents died of the coronavirus during the many months of the pandemic, and almost 1.4 million infections were recorded in 38,000 long-term care facilities? The institutions — even as the pandemic’s terrible toll keeps rising — still account for a third of all U.S. deaths due to the disease.

The facilities’ covid-related deaths have plummeted by 91% since December, especially as public health officials campaigned to get residents and staff vaccinated, the New York Times reported (see chart above, based on federal data). But public confidence in long-term care facilities also has plunged, as reflected in admissions and occupancy:

April 7, 2021

Can U.S. billions keep seniors at home and out of problem nursing homes?

by Patrick A. Malone

As the coronavirus pandemic’s most catastrophic effects recede in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, notably due to vaccinations and other public health measures, residents and their loved ones still face costly, confounding issues in safeguarding the aged, sick, and injured. The Biden Administration wants to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to help.

But will the plans founder due to Republican resistance? And will even a huge jolt of funding be enough to deal with a graying nation’s growing problems with long-term care?

Our own homes provide a cornerstone of Democratic proposals to deal better with nightmares with the cost, safety, and availability of long-term care. Instead of sinking yet more public money — via Medicare and Medicaid — into institutions, can the federal government, instead, improve funding so seniors, the ill, and injured can stay home and get treatment there? As the Washington Post reported:

April 4, 2021

U.S. teeters between vaccines’ rising successes and pandemic’s fourth wave

by Patrick A. Malone

The coronavirus vaccine has shown powerful protective qualities when medical scientists scrutinized its large-scale results in real life.

It has demonstrated great potency in safeguarding kids ages 12-15, in early test results from the shots’ makers.

The inoculation appears to be lasting, ensuring patients for at least six months after did not suffer serious infection or hospitalization.

March 28, 2021

The data could not be clearer: Stubborn pandemic demands caution still

by Patrick A. Malone

In 25 states, including in Virginia and Maryland, data show coronavirus cases are running higher than U.S. averages and staying high. In seven states, notably Michigan, new virus-related deaths are increasing.

A half dozen states have recorded hundreds of confirmed cases involving corona virus infections with a variant known as B 117 that was first detected in Britain and may be more contagious and lethal. States up and down both coasts and in the Upper Midwest have reported dozens of infections involving a variant first detected in South Africa and known as B 1351. It, too, is believed to spread more easily and cause greater illness and death.

Across the country, an average of 58,000 coronaviruses are occurring daily. The country has exceeded 30 million infections and the nation is approaching 550,000 deaths due to the disease.

March 21, 2021

Battle to quell coronavirus pandemic opens up yet more troubling divides

by Patrick A. Malone

The battle to quell the coronavirus pandemic has opened new divides among us — splitting those willing and not to get vaccinated against the disease, those who will adjust easily or not to life when the illness is a less dominant factor, and those who do not recover easily or quickly and struggle long after their tough bouts with the virus.

Will these differences widen further and create greater challenge for public health officials and political leaders, or can successes in fighting Covid-19 help smooth over rifts?

As vaccine supplies and vaccination sites grow and more than 100 million Americans have now gotten at least one coronavirus shot, concerns persist about equity and hesitancy in the national inoculation campaign.

March 17, 2021

U.S. nursing-home rating system ‘broken’ by gamed data and poor oversight

by Patrick A. Malone

Federal regulators, by allowing owners and operators to self-report quality and safety data and failing to audit vital information with diligence, have “broken” the national nursing-home rating system — what was supposed to be an invaluable tool for consumers to make life-and-death decisions about where to place vulnerable loved ones needing round-the-clock care.

Instead, the New York Times reported, the popular and convenient star rankings have become little more than an inaccurate means for facilities to advertise and market themselves, even while keeping from the public their serious problems — including abuse, neglect, over medication, sexual assault, and killings of the aged, injured, and ailing.

The system’s glaring shortcomings were exposed even more by the coronavirus pandemic, the newspaper reported. It launched its deep dig into the ratings when it became clear that highly rated homes, when the pandemic struck, did not fare notably better, as might be expected.

March 12, 2021

Nursing homes’ lethal health-staffing problem: Churn rates as high as 300%

by Patrick A. Malone

Churn may be a wonderful word when discussing fresh milk, heavy cream, and butter. But it can be a nightmare term for the too-common, rapid, and lethal turnover that occurs in health staff at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

Personnel turnover left the aged, injured, and ailing residents at care centers, with an average annual health staff churn-rate of 128% and some facilities hitting as high as 300%, even more vulnerable during the coronavirus pandemic, a new study reported.

David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and one of the study’s authors, told the New York Times of the information he and his colleagues gathered:

March 3, 2021

As virus threat eases, alarms sound on hedge funds owning nursing homes

by Patrick A. Malone

Just as good news expands about vaccines and declining coronavirus cases and deaths in the nation’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, grim information also is developing on how the facilities’ ownership, particularly by wealthy investors, can be lethal to residents.

The positive effects of early efforts to get vulnerable long-term care residents and staff vaccinated can be seen in the accompanying graphic (courtesy of the New York Times). The newspaper reported this:

“Throughout the pandemic, there has been perhaps nowhere more dangerous than a nursing home. The coronavirus has raced through some 31,000 long-term care facilities in the United States, killing more than 163,000 residents and employees and accounting for more than a third of all virus deaths since the late spring. But for the first time since the American outbreak began roughly a year ago — at a nursing care center in Kirkland, Wash. — the threat inside nursing homes may have finally reached a turning point. Since the arrival of vaccines, which were prioritized to long-term care facilities starting in late December, new cases and deaths in nursing homes, a large subset of long-term care facilities, have fallen steeply, outpacing national declines, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data. The turnaround is an encouraging sign for vaccine effectiveness and offers an early glimpse at what may be in store for the rest of the country, as more and more people get vaccinated.

February 22, 2021

Big freeze heats up need for emergency plans for individuals and institutions

by Patrick A. Malone

The climate change deniers can holler their heads off. But for all too many people from coast-to-coast, Mother Nature’s fury is tragically clear — as is the importance of not only future thinking but also emergency planning, by individuals and institutions.

This includes knowing common sense steps to safeguard one’s self and loved ones, in unusual circumstance, from misuse and abuse of ordinary products that also may have their own shortcomings, defects, or dangers.

Huge hurrahs, of course, are in order for the overworked, overstressed, and valiant doctors, nurses, and other health workers who — even while battling the over load of the coronavirus pandemic — have kept up medical services in hard hit areas of Texas and elsewhere during a brutal winter storm and its harsh freeze. The nightmarish conditions afflicted not only big hospitals but also those who provide desperately needed at-home care to the vulnerable.

February 16, 2021

Nursing home coronavirus cases and deaths decline as vaccinations increase

by Patrick A. Malone

The campaign to vaccinate millions of residents and staff in the nation’s thousands of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities against the coronavirus is gaining momentum and showing early, positive effects.

At the same time, however, information is emerging on shabby treatment of the vulnerable, including their exposure to illness exported into their facilities from hospitals, explaining the increasing number of civil lawsuits that owners and operators face.

Good news has been so rare with the pandemic that it may be worth considering first the coast-to-coast drive for long-term care facility vaccinations.