County barring review by state
Officials refusing nursing home inspections due to lack of proof
Rensselaer County officials refused to let a state Health Department inspection team into the county nursing home Wednesday, saying the inspectors wouldn’t provide proof they had tested negative for COVID -19. It is a continuation of a clash between the county and state over access to the nursing home.
“We just wanted the state to follow the state rules,” said Richard Crist, the county's director of operations.
Crist said the county wanted the group of about seven Health Department employees to either show paperwork that they had tested negative for the virus or to sign a county-provided form attesting that they had tested negative for the disease.
The state group departed Van Rensselaer Manor ( VRM), the county nursing home, around 10 a.m., according to county officials.
Similar scenes played out in July. State health officials tried to carry out a surprise inspection of the facility on July 20 at the request of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), but were stopped when County Executive Steve Mclaughlin showed up and demanded they be escorted for the duration of the inspection. They refused and then left, according to state and local officials.
State officials returned to the facility three days later with a regional CMS director in tow and faced “additional resistance and attempts by the county to interfere with the survey team,” according to state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, who
said visits are supposed to be unannounced and unaccompanied in order to provide an "unvarnished view" of a facility's operations.
After the earlier confrontation, Zucker warned Mclaughlin that the attempt to block a health inspection at the countyrun nursing home could put the facility ’s Medicaid and Medicare funding at risk.
“When the county executive pulled the same stunt back in July, we warned him that it would ultimately be his nursing home residents and county taxpayers that would pay the price. Although not required by federal mandate, our inspectors are tested weekly in the same manner as the staff at Van Rensselaer Manor. This is reckless obstruction of a federally mandated inspection and we have referred the matter to CMS,” Gary Holmes, a spokesman for the state Health Department, said Wednesday.
Mclaughlin sent a letter to Zucker Wednesday saying that the state's guidelines for visitors to nursing homes require all visitors to be tested and free of COVID -19 and that there is "no 'carve-out' for state staff and inspectors." He said the county is following the state-issued directives.
"At every turn, VRM staff worked to accommodate the inspection by the state while also following the state directives requiring all visitors to be free of COVID -19 and current in testing," Mclaughlin wrote.
In the current situation, the team was scheduled to be at Van Rensselaer Manor for five days to carry out an annual inspection, county officials said. The last time an inspection was made was in December 2018, county officials said. The state conducts the next inspection within nine to 24 months of the previous one, they said.
“Our intention is to ensure the safety of the facility and that the inspection is done safely as well,” Crist said.
He noted that VRM, which has a capacity for 362 residents, has had one resident and 10 staff members test positive for COVID -19 since the beginning of the pandemic and it has had no fatalities.
The county, however, has seen 32 residents die from COVID -19 at three privately owned nursing homes. These facilities are the Troy Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Troy, Diamond Hill in Schaghticoke and Riverside Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Castleton-on-hudson.
Crist said the county assumes that when the state issues rulings about protecting nursing home residents and other people from COVID -19 that it is following the rulings as well. The county claims it has curtailed access to the nursing home in an effort to prevent residents from being infected.
Mclaughlin, a Republican, is a regular critic of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat and has sparred with the governor's advisers on social media. Mclaughlin has joined with other state Republicans in criticizing Cuomo’s handling of nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic.