MARYLAND IMPOSES crackdown on covid-19 reporting.
THE WASHINGTON POST
Maryland has fined at least two dozen nursing homes for failing to provide information on covid-19 cases and deaths to state health officials.
According to letters and reports dating back to March 1 from the state’s Office of Health Care Quality, 24 Medicare-certified facilities were fined between $250 and $750 in early May for failing “to submit daily reporting information,” violating an executive order issued by Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, in April.
Fran Phillips, Maryland’s deputy secretary for public health, said compliance with reporting was about 50% before the state started issuing fines. She said that as of Saturday, it was at 98%.
“We wanted to know where the vulnerabilities were,” Phillips said. “It was super, super important that we got compliance.”
The documents, which were provided to The Washington Post on Friday evening, also include reports that detail deficiencies in infection control measures found during nine “covid-19 focused emergency preparedness surveys” by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in late April and early May.
These reports are among the first government-issued documents indicating that some Maryland nursing homes were ill-prepared for the coronavirus. Some facility leaders dispute the findings of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services surveyors and argue that government agencies share blame for failing to provide adequate support to nursing homes.
In May, employees at Maryland’s hardest-hit facilities told The Post that shortages in testing, protective equipment and staffing contributed to the rapid transmission of covid-19 among residents and staff members.
As of Friday evening, 11,999 staff members and residents at Maryland long-term care facilities had contracted covid-19, said Mike Ricci, Hogan’s spokesman. More than 1,700 had died, accounting for 60% of the total toll in the state.
Phillips said more than 58,000 testing kits have been distributed by the state to 227 nursing homes and are currently being processed by the state lab. Results of the universal testing, which was announced by Hogan in April, will likely be made available soon.
Nursing homes are required to submit information about deaths and infections to the state’s health information system, CRISP, daily from midnight to 11 a.m.
Phillips said nursing homes were given a grace period of several days after the system was instituted before the state imposed fines. But Joseph DeMattos, president of Health Facilities Association of Maryland, said that in the first weeks after Hogan’s order, the state was not issuing receipts, making it difficult for nursing homes to determine whether their information had been received.
“There likely were instances where nursing homes did not file the CRISP report on time because they were actually focused on real-time hands-on care,” DeMattos said.
State officials also provided covid-19 “preparedness surveys” reports for nine facilities that were conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that regulates nursing homes. Five were reportedly in compliance with regulations, and four were not. Phillips said she is not immediately clear whether more than nine facilities were surveyed by the agency.
In March, before the suspended nonemergency inspections of nursing homes, inspectors conducted annual surveys of at least 30 facilities, including some that would later go on to report among the highest cases and deaths related to covid-19.
At Sagepoint Senior Living Services in La Plata, where 97 residents contracted covid-19 and at least 34 died, a federal inspector determined on Feb. 15 that the facility was in compliance with all state and federal regulations. Three months later, the facility was cited for not using appropriate personal protective equipment, not separating residents with suspected or known covid-19 cases and not obtaining lab results in a timely manner.