Georgia hospitals, nursing homes push for more federal COVID-19 relief
Capitol Beat News Service
Georgia hospital and healthcare leaders pushed a top U.S. health official and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler Monday for more federal funding amid a recent surge in COVID-19 cases.
At a roundtable talk in Atlanta, representatives from the state’s largest hospitals and nursing-home associations detailed growing concerns over maintaining care and curbing infections due to tight finances, difficulty procuring test kits and health disparities in minority communities.
They laid out challenges with retaining hospital and nursing staff, receiving enough sanitization materials and keeping seniors in long-term care facilities from becoming depressed due to prolonged isolation as the virus continues battering Georgia.
More federal funds for health-care providers in a second round of coronavirus relief will be critical to fend off a large increase in positive cases and intensive-care hospitalizations over the past month, several hospital executives said Monday.
“Anything we can get is important because the financial burden, especially in hot spots, has been really tremendous on health-care centers and hospitals,” said Dr. Jonathan Lewin, president and CEO of Emory Healthcare in Atlanta.
Monday’s talk was hosted by Loeffler, R-Ga., and Seema Verma, administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Loeffler, who has brought legislation to broaden insurance coverage for telemedicine, aims to focus on federal aid for schools, health-care providers and businesses as Congress hashes out another funding package.
So far, Loeffler has opposed calls to extend $600 weekly federal unemployment benefits in effect since April that are set to expire at month’s end, arguing many businesses have struggled to bring employees back to work amid unemployment benefits that may be higher than their regular paychecks.
“What we have to look at is making sure the relief goes to those most impacted,” Loeffler said. “We’re looking at restaurants going bankrupt, going out of business. We have to know that there are areas that have been more impacted than others and making sure we’re addressing that particular issue.”
State officials have helped increase staffing levels at around 50 hospitals and 70 long-term care facilities in
Georgia via staff augmentation contracts since March, said Frank Berry, commissioner of the state Department of Community Health.
Keeping that extra support in place will be critical as the summer months wear on and hospitals face capacity issues as more patients are admitted, Berry said.
But positive COVID-19 cases and intensive-care hospitalizations are still climbing, sparking worries among hospitals and providers that health-care finances already pummeled by the virus since March could get worse.
“Our volumes are significantly higher in this wave than they were in the previous,” said John Haupert, president and CEO of Grady Health System in Atlanta. “What we’re very concerned about now is there is not a great compliance with social distancing and masking in our community.”
Nursing homes stumbled early in the outbreak due to lack of training in infectiousdisease control measures and a severe shortage of tests that could help facility staff quickly isolate infected residents.
Many elderly residents are showing signs of weight loss and depression due to their isolation as long-term care facilities remain locked down across the state, said representatives from several nursing-home groups.
“We are identifying the need that they have to see each other,” said Deborah Meade, board chair of the American Health Care Association.
Verma, the federal Medicaid administrator, said her agency has started sending “point-of-care” test kits to nursing homes across the country to conduct COVID-19 tests for residents and staff inside facilities rather than offsite. Around 1,000 kits have already been sent, she said.
Verma called those kits a “game changer” that would help elderly-care facilities curb infection rates so that residents can begin interacting with each other at a safe distance and potentially receiving visitors.
“This has been an incredibly difficult time,” Verma said. “I think the tests that we’re doing are really going to be that turning point and allowing for that reunification (with families), and allowing for them to have a better quality of life inside the nursing home.”
Health-care leaders also discussed infection and treatment disparities among minority communities, which have seen higher positive-case rates compared to white populations during the pandemic.