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MAY 31, 2020
"Behind the COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths"
 with William Walter Kay
 

FULL TWO HOURS

WE THE PEOPLE RADIO
 

HOUR 1

WE THE PEOPLE RADIO

HOUR 2

WE THE PEOPLE RADIO

 

 
Discussed on today's show:

New York State's nursing home body-count must already exceed 20,000

Howard Zucker's Scarlet Letter

N March 25, 2020 New York State’s Health Department issued the urgent Advisory: Hospital Discharges and Admissions to Nursing Homes. Nursing Home (NH) Administrators, Directors of Nursing, and Hospital Discharge Planners needed to “carefully review this guidance.” 

To “clarify expectations” regarding nursing home acceptance of residents returning from hospital and nursing home acceptance of new admissions, the Advisory orders: 

“…NHs must comply with the expedited receipt of residents from hospitals to NHs

No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of Covid-19

Hospital Administrators are given discretion over assessing patient fitness for transit and over choosing which patients to send. Thereafter:

“No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of Covid-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for Covid-19 prior to admission or re-admission

Withering denunciations of this Advisory appeared instantly. A March 29, 2020 joint statement (Society for Post-Acute and Long-term Care Medicine; American Health Care Association; and National Center for Assisted Living) references the then ongoing Covid-19 outbreak at a Washington nursing home which killed 40 and sent half the residents to emergency wards. 

The joint statement also relays CDC data indicating that, within geriatric facilities, Covid-19’s case-to-fatality rate exceeds 15%.

The statement further cites a March 27, 2020 CDC finding that 57% of Covid-19-positive nursing home residents remained asymptomatic for up to a week. During this incubatory period such residents: “have potential for substantial viral shedding.” 

The authors rejected the re-purposing of New York’s nursing homes into frontline quarantines. New York nursing homes were already encountering critical shortages, or complete depletions, of personal protective equipment (PPE). Staffing shortages were exacerbated by Covid-19 outbreaks among workers and by school closures which threw many into childcare crises. Poorly trained workers were doing shifts at multiple homes.