Lamont plans ‘high outreach’ to nursing homes
In response to rising concerns about infections and deaths in nursing homes, the state Department of Public Health and the governor’s office is launching an aggressive outreach campaign.
“We’re going to be doing on-site visits to every nursing home in the state within seven to 10 days,” Max Reiss, spokesman for Gov. Ned Lamont, told Hearst Connecticut Media on Saturday. “With the knowledge that there is such a high prevalence of cases in nursing homes, it only makes sense to have high outreach with these homes.”
The visits are not spot inspections, Reiss said, but rather an attempt to work with the state’s more than 200 skilled-care providers.
“The state has tried to be as proactive as possible in an ongoing and evolving crisis, to try to be as helpful as we can to as many of these skilled nursing home and long-term care residents and their staffs as possible,” Reiss said.
The announcement came amid sharp criticism of the state by Rob Baril, president of SEIU 1199NE, which represents 25,000 health care workers in Connecticut — about one third of the total amount in the state — including nurses and lowerwage assistants and support staff who are significantly exposed to the coronavirus.
Baril said Saturday that the state’s efforts are insufficient, specifically when it comes to ensuring the workers are protected from the virus with proper gear, as well as making sure they have access to free testing and treatment if they become infected.
“It’s an industry that has been underfunded for over a decade and the chickens have come home to roost,” Baril said. “It’s a mess.”
He called the conditions in nursing homes “insane.”
“The workers are doing, frankly, heroic things right now, but they are under conditions of stress that are hard to quantify,” Baril said.
At least two nurses at nursing homes have died this month after contracting COVID-19, Baril told Hearst Connecticut Media on Thursday. The two were licensed practical nurses.
Angeline Bernadel, a 52-year-old Haitian immigrant, married with two children, worked in Milford at the West River Healthcare Center, which has had two resident deaths associated with the disease. The other, whose name has not been made public, worked at homes in Bloomfield, where six residents have died, and Hartford, at a home that has not had any COVID-19 cases.
Jean Bernadel, Angeline Bernadel’s husband of 27 years, told Hearst Connecticut Media on Saturday that he didn’t know details about the conditions at his wife’s workplace, adding that she never complained about it.
“She was a good wife. She was a nice person,” Bernadel said.
Baril said there are other workers in intensive care units in hospitals because of the virus.
In response to Baril’s repeated complaints, three top state officials late Friday sent him a six-page letter outlining in detail the ways the state is working with, and helping, nursing homes.
For example, Medicaid reimbursement rates have been raised by 10 percent for all non-COVID-19 residents; homes will receive $400 a day for all COVIDpositive
residents; and the so-called COVID recovery homes will receive $600 a day per resident, more than double the standard rates, according to the letter.
Baril said he primarily blames President Donald Trump and the federal government for not making money available to nursing homes, but that the state has not done enough either.
The union has 6,000 employees at 69 Connecticut nursing homes, 60 of which had confirmed coronavirus cases as of Thursday, the most recent day that the state released a breakdown.
Baril said the state’s measures are a step in the right direction, but they are still “not enough.”
“(Union members) want to do the work of taking care of the elderly even with the associated risks,” Baril said. “They just want to be able to protect themselves and protect their families should they get sick.”
“I don’t think that’s too much to ask,” he added.
The letter to Baril states that Connecticut Insurance Commissioner Andrew Mais recently announced that all fully-insured health plan members can get COVID-19 testing and treatment at no out-of-pocket cost.
“Exactly zero of the 69 nursing homes in my union…have fully-funded plans,” Baril said.
There is no state agency or professional group that tracks the number of deaths and illnesses of nursing home employees, but Baril said at least 700 SEIU 1199 employees who work at nursing homes have contracted COVID-19, some of whom are now in intensive care at hospitals.
The Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities, the state’s largest nursing home association, and LeadingAge Connecticut, the association of nonprofit nursing homes and other providers of aging services, issued a statement Saturday, requesting nursing home data related to the virus be used as a driving factor to further help nursing homes and workers.
The statement indicated that limited supplies and testing limitations were some catalysts in the spread of the virus among the nursing home workforce and its residents.
“The data continues to show that COVID-19 is making its way indiscriminately into nursing homes in Connecticut and across the nation,” Matthew Barrett,
president and CEO of CAHCF, said in a statement released Saturday. “This means that nursing home operators and employees who are doing all the right things will have to battle the virus through no fault of their own. We must focus on these heroic efforts and use the data to win the battle.”
Mag Morelli, president of LeadingAge Connecticut, stressed the importance of ensuring those nursing home workers have proper protection to prevent contracting the coronavirus.
“Nursing homes are serving a vital role in the health care response to this virus and nursing home staff is on the front line,” a statement from Morelli said. “They must be prioritized for PPE and testing supplies — particularly as nursing homes statewide have assumed increased responsibilities as partners to hospitals in caring for COVID-19 patients. The data should inform these supply decisions.”
In the letter to Baril, the state officials — the commissioners of the departments of Public Health and Social Services and the secretary of the Office of Policy and Management — agreed there’s a shortage of protective equipment worldwide.
The governor’s office has said that in addition to the state providing masks and respirators to critical employees, employers, broadly speaking, should obtain protective equipment on their own.
The stepped-up outreach is in addition to daily calls between the nursing homes and state officials. When it comes to equipment needs, Reiss said, “nursing homes have not hesitated to let us know. … We’re making every effort to supply nursing homes.”