NURSING HOME FURY
Tish claims Cuomo team vastly undercounted COVID-19 deaths
ALBANY — Attorney General Letitia James accused the Cuomo administration Thursday of undercounting COVID nursing home fatalities by as much as 50% in a bombshell report — prompting state officials to finally release long-sought data on deaths.
Following the release of the 76-page report, which also found many elder care facilities failed to protect vulnerable seniors from the deadly virus, state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker provided a breakdown of nursing home deaths.
The new data includes residents who died after being taken to a hospital — information that reporters, advocates and lawmakers have been requesting for months.
In a statement, Zucker said the state has recorded 5,957 deaths in long-term care facilities plus another 3,829 in hospitals for a total of 9,786. The previous total shared by the state was just over 8,700.
Zucker took umbrage with James’ use of the term “undercounted,” arguing that the state’s overall death toll of 34,742 remains unchanged.
“The OAG’s report is only referring to the count of people who were in nursing homes but transferred to hospitals and later died,” he said. “The OAG suggests that all should be counted as nursing home deaths and not hospital deaths even though they died in hospitals.
“That does not in any way change the total count of deaths but is instead a question of allocating the number of deaths between hospitals and nursing homes,” he added, noting that nursing home deaths make up 28% of New York’s total, which is below the national average.
Nationally, the Kaiser Family Foundation lists 146,888 nursing home fatalities, 35% of the 423,519 total fatalities in the U.S. reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Both Zucker and Gov. Cuomo have faced intense criticism for until now not including the number of nursing home residents who died after being transferred to a hospital in the total count, and other actions related to senior facilities.
A controversial March mandate from the DOH requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients might have increased the risk of others at the congregate facilities contracting the virus, the attorney general’s report found.
“As the pandemic and our investigations continue, it is imperative that we understand why the residents of nursing homes in New York unnecessarily suffered at such an alarming rate,” James said in a statement. “While we cannot bring back the individuals we lost to this crisis, this report seeks to offer transparency that the public deserves and to spur increased action to protect our most vulnerable residents.”
Criticism grew after a July report issued by the state absolved the administration of any blame for issues at elder care sites and laid blame on asymptomatic staffers who unwittingly infected residents.
Sen. James Skoufis (D-Rockland), who heads his chamber’s investigations committee, threatened earlier this week to subpoena Zucker and other officials in order to compel them to release the total number.
“We are reviewing this comprehensive report by the Attorney General,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) said in a statement Thursday. “The tragic situation in our nursing homes remains a heartbreaking reminder of the toll this pandemic took on this state.
“Nothing will bring back our loved ones that we lost, but it is crucial that information guides our responses so this will not happen again,” she added.
Republican leaders went further, with Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt (R-Lockport) calling on Zucker to resign.
“The report released today by the attorney general is confirmation for the thousands of families who lost loved ones to COVID-19 in New York nursing homes,” Ortt said. “By underreporting COVID deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50%, the Department of Health has betrayed the public trust.”
Last year, under the Trump administration, the Department of Justice also requested information about coronavirus deaths at nursing homes in New York and three other states, all led by Democratic governors.
The feds claimed the probe was part of the first step in determining whether to open a formal investigation under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, but Cuomo chafed at the request, calling it blatantly “political.”
Cuomo’s office has repeatedly pushed back on criticisms regarding the March order on readmitting COVID-positive residents, arguing that it was based on federal guidance.
James’ investigation, which began after the governor asked the AG to set up a hotline to receive complaints about nursing homes failing to keep in touch with family members as in-person visits were banned, found that nursing home residents who died from COVID-19 after being transferred to hospitals have not been included in the official state count.
It also found that preliminary data also “reflects apparent underreporting” to the state by some nursing homes of resident deaths occurring in facilities as well.
In one example, one unnamed nursing home reported five confirmed and six presumed COVID-19 deaths at the facility as of Aug. 3 to the state.
However, the facility reported a total of 27 coronavirus deaths and 13 hospital deaths — a discrepancy of 29 deaths — to the AG’s office.
Bill Hammond, a senior fellow with the Empire Center, a conservative government watchdog group that has sued the state for the total nursing home death count, said the report backs critics’ claims.
“The attorney general’s report confirms that the Health Department is grossly underreporting COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, leaving thousands uncounted, as the Empire Center and other critics have warned for months,” he said. “The attorney general found evidence that even the DOH’s count of in-facility deaths is substantially lower than the true toll.”
In addition to accusing the state of dramatically undercounting deaths, the investigation found many nursing homes put residents at risk of infection by failing to comply with safety protocols.
Some sites failed to properly isolate residents who tested positive for COVID-19 or adequately screen or test employees for the virus. Others demanded that sick employees continue to work and care for residents or face retaliation or termination.
The report also found some operators didn’t train employees in infection control protocol or use of PPE.
Facilities also caused “avoidable pain and distress” by not complying with an executive order requiring communication with family members of residents.
Ellen Cariddi, whose 85-yearold mother Evelyn Gengenbach died April 15 last year from COVID, lived at Huntington Hills Center for Health and Rehabilitation on Long Island when the virus hit New York. Cariddi pulled her mom out of the nursing home about three weeks before, once she learned someone in Gengenbach’s unit had contacted the virus.
Yet soon after that, Gengenbach began showing symptoms of the deadly disease. She later died at the former Winthrop Hospital. Cariddi said she knew her mother contracted the virus at the nursing home, but that her mom likely wouldn’t be counted in the nursing home death count because she had died at the hospital.
“To hear about this [report Thursday] was just something that we always had faith would come out. It was just a matter of how long it would take for the truth to come out,” Cariddi said. “It isn’t surprising, because we felt it all along,” she said of the undercount. “We knew it, we lived it.” James’ office will continue to investigate allegations, focusing more than 20 nursing homes where reported conduct “presented particular concern.”
However, the report notes, due to recent changes in state law, it’s unclear if facilities can be held accountable if they have failed to protect the residents in their care.