The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
State failed to protect nursing home residents
The state’s policy allowing nursing homes to stop testing after two weeks without any cases could lead to further outbreaks.
Connecticut was wholly unprepared for the devastating spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes across our state.
An interim report released last week is nothing short of an indictment on the governor’s administration and Department of Public Health. It found that Connecticut ignored nursing homes and failed to provide lifesaving personal protective equipment. The result was a nursing home death rate far greater than the national average. To this day, our state is still not prepared for a potential deadly second wave in our long-term care facilities.
The report highlights deadly mistakes in emergency response as well as a decade of policies under Democrat leaders in which seniors were never made a priority. It is alarming, devastating and I fear still only begins to scratch the surface of what led to unimaginable terror, isolation, and death among those that should have been the first to be protected.
The report’s findings include:
⏩ 74 percent of all deaths due to COVID-19 in Connecticut occurred in long term care facilities. Alarmingly higher than the national average of only 40 percent.
⏩ Connecticut had insufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) going to nursing homes.
⏩ The administration’s emergency response efforts focused exclusively on hospitals and ignored nursing homes.
⏩ Connecticut’s Department of Public Health lacked an electronic reporting system and relied on fax machines for two months.
⏩ Six out of nine positions in the state’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response were vacant until July, months after the pandemic ravaged our state.
⏩ States such as New York were far ahead of Connecticut in PPE requirements for nursing home facilities. In this regard Connecticut followed federal guidance.
⏩ Testing was insufficient for months. State policy limited testing to hospital staff and patients, failing to prioritize nursing homes. The governor’s order to test all nursing home staff and patients did not come until June 1, months too late. And as we already know, some nursing homes never began testing until the end of July.
The state’s policy allowing nursing homes to stop testing after two weeks without any cases could lead to further outbreaks.
The report also has its shortfalls. It involved no interviews with nursing home residents, no review of the state’s personal protective equipment purchasing policies and not a single on-site visit. Researchers only utilized publicly reported data from the Department of Public Health and only one page in the 95-page report was devoted to person centered care.
Even with those limitations, the report highlights the failures of an administration to protect nursing home residents in an emergency. The reported lack of PPE, while not closely examined, also makes me question whether the state effectively used it multistate cooperative to obtain PPE and leverage our buying power in health care to help seniors in nursing homes.
The report also shows a Medicaid problem rearing its ugly head. Over the last decade Democrat governors and lawmakers only increased Medicaid reimbursement rates to nursing homes not tied to salary by 1 percent. These low rates have tied the hands of nursing homes making it impossible to keep proper staffing levels, purchase their own PPE, access technology and modernize their facilities to maintain the quality of care seniors deserve. Medicaid by no means is a gold standard, and when the state is in charge of medical decisions quality suffers.
So how do we move forward?
⏩ We need a plan for a second wave, from PPE to keeping covid-positive patients together, and we need it now.
⏩ We must learn how 30 percent of nursing homes had few or no deaths, and why others were so decimated.
⏩ We must treat seniors with dignity and allow family members to be their eyes and ears by revising visitation restrictions.
For months, nursing home residents were terrorized. They were kept in their rooms scared and isolated, surrounded by illness and death, without even an opportunity to walk outside for a breath of fresh air for months. Workers were asked to care for patients without proper PPE, testing or protection. We must stop this psychological, emotional and mental trauma from ever happening again.
Nursing home residents do not have time on their side. Connecticut needs to act to better protect those who are the most vulnerable. If the governor cannot act, lawmakers must.