In California, at least 1,434 nursing home residents have died from COVID-19 — 38% of the total fatalities across the state. The actual number is likely higher. Only about 80% of the state's 1,100 licensed nursing facilities are reporting COVID-19 infections or deaths to regulators.
A truly horrific report, Judd, Thank you. Given the nature of "for profit" everything in Americorporation, and the incessant kickbacks to politicians, it's amazing that anyone at all even has food these days. Horror stories and low voter turnout go hand in hand. Still only 20% of young people vote. The future is not bright when the politicians work for bribes.
Last comment I promise! I will add that in my opinion private equity doesn’t mix well with nursing homes based on my personal observations And knowledge
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, in addition to having the state with the most deaths, slashing social safety net programs in the latest budget, and not doing nearly enough to deal with the problem of COVID-19 in prisons and jails, Gov. Andrew Cuomo reportedly has given immunity to nursing home executives after the Greater NY Hospital Association donated to his last campaign. And people want to laud his administration's response...
Probably the one decent thing I for sure did in my life was honoring my father with the promise I made at 16 to never put him in a nursing home after my Grandfather died in one.
I looked after him for 11 years and 1month after he had a stroke.
He always said you go in one head first and come out feet first.
A sad commentary true. But making bucks on understaffed and underpaid workers and misery of the residents during Covid 19 has been hard to watch.
I worked in Adult Day Care for 10 years. I am not immune to aging, I am so sad this killer disease happened so many people.
Nursing facilities are major hotspots for COVID as well as other diseases & the neglect of or outright abuse of residents is a long standing problem. Currently Minnesota has reported over 2700 cases of covid in long term care facilities but in the past the problem of neglect & abuse were rampant, my point is covid is only the latest threat to these already vulnerable residents. Adding immunity threatens the ability of residents & family members holding facilities accountable even after covid. I hope the CA Gov doesn’t sign this exec order.
Judd I appreciate you reporting these figures but many more issues surrounding these numbers you would be astounded— as would most people if they knew how the system ACTUALLY worked, good and bad. Just posting fatality numbers attributed to nursing homes To make a point that there is a strict correlation between quality of care and deaths in my view is irresponsible and misleading.
Thank you for the report however there are so many factors that make this a major oversimplification of the issues surrounding nursing homes which you raised. I’m not sure where to start but first you have to break out non profits from for profits because there is a large difference between them and that can be quantified.
You also need to take into account reimbursement problems with Medicaid and other services with nursing homes also known as skilled nursing facilities. It is THE safety net for Indigent senior adults in this Country needing long term care— absent a long term care insurance plan for seniors this is it. Nursing homes have also changed over the years and are caught in a funny spot taking on multiple roles as a long term care provider and short term rehab. Nursing homes also compete heavily with hospitals for labor and the resources simply are not there for many providers to pay higher wages especially if the home is unionized (not making a point about unions) other than the benefit ratio for these workers is often 50-60 percent of wages so that must be taken into account. Most Nursing homes in NY are unionized by SEIU and the workers pay very little out of pocket costs for healthcare or pensions— if any costs in some cases.
With regard to the immunity shield, almost all reputable nursing home providers don’t care about the immunity shield it doesn’t work like a switch where they change their behavior because the threat of being sued goes away— it just doesn’t work like that. Either the facility has a culture of providing good care or they don’t it’s not something that can be changed quickly. Most nursing homes in high litigation areas get sued a lot anyway right or wrong and so it’s not something that actively dictates how care is provided.
Lastly, except for nursing homes (and there are quite a few) that just had poor infection control — but more importantly multiple occupancy rooms- many nursing homes worked very hard to protect their residents and staff— but Covid is insidious and highly contagious, without rapid testing every day of staff that were asymptomatic there can be no way of preventing the introduction of the disease to the residents. The disease hit the elderly very hard at assisted living facilities and their own private homes through exposure to home care aides and also just exposure to their own family too.
I think the point of the shield for litigation liability was to make sure providers didn’t get sued for being “good Samaritans” for taking care of admitted Covid patients from hospitals which needed to discharge them.
I get that nursing homes are an easy target and there are plenty of cases in which they deserve to be run over the coals but try and not put them all into one group, that wouldn’t be the case for anything in life or in business- there are good actors and bad ones.
Pro tip: The CMS star rating system on nursing home compare is overall pretty solid but make sure to not look at the overall star rating but rather the staffing, health inspections (actually look at details) and to an extent quality measures. If the quality measures differ too much from the staffing and health inspection it is likely there is an issue at that facility in my opinion— eg quality measures are 5 stars but staffing is 2 stars and so are inspections. Lastly, the inspections that nursing homes have are not easy and in fact are very tough by the state and feds, very little latitude given and that transcends political administrations.
A truly horrific report, Judd, Thank you. Given the nature of "for profit" everything in Americorporation, and the incessant kickbacks to politicians, it's amazing that anyone at all even has food these days. Horror stories and low voter turnout go hand in hand. Still only 20% of young people vote. The future is not bright when the politicians work for bribes.
Last comment I promise! I will add that in my opinion private equity doesn’t mix well with nursing homes based on my personal observations And knowledge
I have friends in the legal profession who practice nursing home litigation. Some of the stories they have told me are beyond horrific.
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, in addition to having the state with the most deaths, slashing social safety net programs in the latest budget, and not doing nearly enough to deal with the problem of COVID-19 in prisons and jails, Gov. Andrew Cuomo reportedly has given immunity to nursing home executives after the Greater NY Hospital Association donated to his last campaign. And people want to laud his administration's response...
wow - great report
Probably the one decent thing I for sure did in my life was honoring my father with the promise I made at 16 to never put him in a nursing home after my Grandfather died in one.
I looked after him for 11 years and 1month after he had a stroke.
He always said you go in one head first and come out feet first.
A sad commentary true. But making bucks on understaffed and underpaid workers and misery of the residents during Covid 19 has been hard to watch.
I worked in Adult Day Care for 10 years. I am not immune to aging, I am so sad this killer disease happened so many people.
Nursing facilities are major hotspots for COVID as well as other diseases & the neglect of or outright abuse of residents is a long standing problem. Currently Minnesota has reported over 2700 cases of covid in long term care facilities but in the past the problem of neglect & abuse were rampant, my point is covid is only the latest threat to these already vulnerable residents. Adding immunity threatens the ability of residents & family members holding facilities accountable even after covid. I hope the CA Gov doesn’t sign this exec order.
Thank you for shining a spotlight on yet another front in our fight against corruption, Judd. Please take a look at Arizona as well: https://twitter.com/thismamatweets/status/1265647482316308485
Judd I appreciate you reporting these figures but many more issues surrounding these numbers you would be astounded— as would most people if they knew how the system ACTUALLY worked, good and bad. Just posting fatality numbers attributed to nursing homes To make a point that there is a strict correlation between quality of care and deaths in my view is irresponsible and misleading.
Thank you for the report however there are so many factors that make this a major oversimplification of the issues surrounding nursing homes which you raised. I’m not sure where to start but first you have to break out non profits from for profits because there is a large difference between them and that can be quantified.
You also need to take into account reimbursement problems with Medicaid and other services with nursing homes also known as skilled nursing facilities. It is THE safety net for Indigent senior adults in this Country needing long term care— absent a long term care insurance plan for seniors this is it. Nursing homes have also changed over the years and are caught in a funny spot taking on multiple roles as a long term care provider and short term rehab. Nursing homes also compete heavily with hospitals for labor and the resources simply are not there for many providers to pay higher wages especially if the home is unionized (not making a point about unions) other than the benefit ratio for these workers is often 50-60 percent of wages so that must be taken into account. Most Nursing homes in NY are unionized by SEIU and the workers pay very little out of pocket costs for healthcare or pensions— if any costs in some cases.
With regard to the immunity shield, almost all reputable nursing home providers don’t care about the immunity shield it doesn’t work like a switch where they change their behavior because the threat of being sued goes away— it just doesn’t work like that. Either the facility has a culture of providing good care or they don’t it’s not something that can be changed quickly. Most nursing homes in high litigation areas get sued a lot anyway right or wrong and so it’s not something that actively dictates how care is provided.
Lastly, except for nursing homes (and there are quite a few) that just had poor infection control — but more importantly multiple occupancy rooms- many nursing homes worked very hard to protect their residents and staff— but Covid is insidious and highly contagious, without rapid testing every day of staff that were asymptomatic there can be no way of preventing the introduction of the disease to the residents. The disease hit the elderly very hard at assisted living facilities and their own private homes through exposure to home care aides and also just exposure to their own family too.
I think the point of the shield for litigation liability was to make sure providers didn’t get sued for being “good Samaritans” for taking care of admitted Covid patients from hospitals which needed to discharge them.
I get that nursing homes are an easy target and there are plenty of cases in which they deserve to be run over the coals but try and not put them all into one group, that wouldn’t be the case for anything in life or in business- there are good actors and bad ones.
Pro tip: The CMS star rating system on nursing home compare is overall pretty solid but make sure to not look at the overall star rating but rather the staffing, health inspections (actually look at details) and to an extent quality measures. If the quality measures differ too much from the staffing and health inspection it is likely there is an issue at that facility in my opinion— eg quality measures are 5 stars but staffing is 2 stars and so are inspections. Lastly, the inspections that nursing homes have are not easy and in fact are very tough by the state and feds, very little latitude given and that transcends political administrations.