Study says nursing home fatalities undercounted
Government counts of the devastation from coronavirus among the most vulnerable elderly likely missed more than 16,000 COVID-19 deaths in U.S. nursing homes during the early months of the pandemic, according to an academic study published Thursday.
The missing deaths add up to 14% of what researchers estimate to be the true death toll in nursing homes for all of last year, according to the analysis in JAMA Network Open, a peer-reviewed publication of the American Medical Association.
Researchers also estimated that 68,000 additional coronavirus cases – representing nearly 12% of last year’s total nursing home cases – were omitted before a federal reporting requirement took effect in late May 2020.
Researchers compared federal counts with the numbers captured by 20 states that separately tracked nursing home outbreaks and deaths. Four in 10 deaths went unreported prior to the requirement, the review determined.
The academics said they were driven to ensure the pandemic’s full toll is not forgotten. Applying their findings to the entire nation, they pegged the true impact on nursing homes at 592,629 cases and 118,335 deaths by the end of 2020.
“We would just lose a sense of those people’s lives in the history books,” said lead author Karen Shen, who recently completed her graduate work at Harvard University. “That just didn’t feel right to us.”
In a statement, a nursing home industry association faulted the government for taking months to provide support to nursing homes, noting that realtime data would have helped inform its response, too.
“We encourage state and federal officials to improve our nation’s data collection and sharing efforts during public health emergencies,” the American Health Care Association wrote.
The impact of the missing deaths most affected the total figures reported by northeastern states hit hard by the pandemic’s first wave in the spring of 2020.
A year and a half after her mother’s death, Vivian Zayas is still seeking answers from New York state, where an attorney general investigation this year first exposed rampant underreporting of COVID-19 cases in nursing homes.
Zayas was confused when, the weekend before her expected discharge, her mother stopped being able to talk over the phone from her room. The 78-year-old seamstress had gone to a nursing home for a short rehabilitation following knee replacement surgery complications.
Ana Martinez never returned to the sewing projects neatly pinned in her Brooklyn apartment. Instead, after Zayas insisted that Martinez be transferred to a hospital for treatment, she learned her mother’s lung had collapsed. Ultimately, Zayas received a death certificate stamped “COVID-19.”
Zayas has pressed for more accountability for nursing homes through Voices for Seniors, a nonprofit organization she cofounded with her sister.
“We want investigations,” Zayas said. “That would be the best way to honor not just the people who died, but also the families who are bewildered that the government just does not care.”