COVID-19 recovery centers may face closure
Four Connecticut health facilities have just 32% occupancy
On many days there have been as few as four patients in the 90-bed COVID-19 recovery center that state officials opened in Meriden, and sometimes the three other recovery facilities are so empty that the provider hired to run them has asked the state to either close them or expand the patients they can accept.
Instead of moving COVID-19 patients out of nursing homes, many facilities are choosing to keep them on site as the number of cases has grown.
Athena Health Care owner Lawrence Santilli told the state the four designated centers it operates were underused and needed to be closed if changes weren’t made. As of Monday, the four COVID-19 recovery centers were only 32% occupied and, on many days, they have been far less than that.
“Athena is the only nursing home chain who stepped to the plate when the state asked for plans to address the pandemic and assist with the anticipated surge in hospital patients,” said Timothy Brown, Athena’s director of marketing and communications. “If the occupancy doesn’t increase, then we need to move to close down one or more of the recovery centers.”
iCare Health, which operates long-term care facilities in the Hartford area, has admitted more than 140 new COVID-19 positive cases in its 10 buildings, as well as taking back their own. Patients have come from Hartford HealthCare, Trinity Health of New England and Eastern Connecticut Health Network, according to
iCares Vice President of Business Management David Skoczulek.
Skoczulek said many providers have just decided that, since nearly all of the facilities now have some COVID-19 patients, they will treat people in place.
“Shortly after the designated center plan was in place, the number of existing positive cases in nursing homes jumped up. It made sense to treat these residents in place,” Skoczulek said. “We sourced the PPE, shored up the staffing and cohorted by COVID status. Once all of that was in place, we saw we had the capacity to assist the hospitals in admitting COVID positive patients. It made sense to fulfill that role. And it appears that has happened in many locations statewide.”
It is unclear why hospitals haven’t been sending patients to the COVID-19 facilities, the first of which opened in mid-April, weeks after Gov. Ned Lamont originally announced the plan.
The state Department of Public Health has agreed to expand who can enter the recovery centers to others besides patients leaving hospitals, including:
■ Nursing homes with only a few residents with COVID-19 may voluntarily transfer residents to the recovery centers.
■ Nursing homes that have overflow from their dedicated units may voluntarily transfer residents to the recovery centers.
■ Assisted living centers that are unable to care for COVID-19 residents may voluntarily transfer residents to the recovery centers.
■ Intermediate Care Facilities for people with intellectual disabilities can now also voluntarily transfer patients to recovery centers.
DPH spokesman Av Harris said all transfers must be voluntary and approved by DPH personnel. Harris said this is a change in the original consent order, which allowed only hospital patients to go to the recovery centers.
“What is triggering this is the need to enhance infection control within long-term care facilities, and the decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations meaning less admissions to the COVID-19 recovery facilities from hospital discharges,” Harris said.
The plan goes into effect immediately.
The four designated COVID-19 recovery centers that Athena Health Care operates are in Bridgeport, Sharon, Meriden and Torrington.
The facilities are supposed to be taking in nursing home patients who are leaving the hospital and aren’t yet ready to return to the long-term care facility they came from, or haven’t tested negative twice in 24 hours for the coronavirus. This is the standard most nursing homes are using to take back patients or take in new ones.
At least 69 people have recovered and either returned to their original nursing home or gone home. There have been 26 deaths in the recovery centers, Brown said.
All told, 1,927 nursing home deaths have been linked to COVID-19 as of May 13, according to state data. The nursing home death toll represents 62% of coronavirus deaths recorded in Connecticut.
There have been 276 deaths so far in 75 assisted living facilities, and those deaths are counted separately from nursing homes.
The state is paying providers more than $65 million over the next three months to cover COVID-19-related costs, including increased salaries for workers, costs for screening visitors, the purchase of personal protection equipment and building cleaning costs. The state is also paying a $600 per diem for each patient at the COVID-19 recovery site.
In the Sharon facility, the state required Athena to restrict the building to COVID-19 patients, requiring other patients to be moved out.
“That put a tremendous burden on our staff. We had social workers trying to find new homes for our own patients in the morning and accepting new ones from hospitals in the afternoon,” Brown said. “There was a lot of trauma for our patients and their families.”
Athena officials are also asking state officials to look ahead to the fall, when a second wave of COVID-19 cases is expected.
“Athena has discussed the need with the state to be more agile and able to test residents and staff quicker when the next anticipated wave of COVID-19 comes to Connecticut,” Brown said.
Their recommendations include identifying, testing and moving people quickly from nursing homes to recovery centers to mitigate the spread in those facilities; keeping the Westfield and Torrington locations open and accessible for quick turnaround; and looking at other previously closed locations throughout the state to create additional recovery centers.