House investigators in both parties faulted Democrat-led states Wednesday for issuing “must admit” policies that allowed coronavirus-positive residents to return to nursing homes regardless of whether the facilities had safeguards in place, as federal guidance required.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, Ohio Republican and chairman of the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, said the orders had “predictable and deadly consequences” in three states. There were 15,000 COVID-19 nursing home deaths in New York, 12,500 in Pennsylvania and 9,000 in New Jersey.
“Science never supported must-admit orders,” Mr. Wenstrup said. “We must identify wrongdoing and hold people accountable. Otherwise, it will happen again.”
The coronavirus killed more than 1 million Americans, but it was particularly dangerous for elderly persons, especially those with underlying health conditions, in contrast to younger persons, who tended to recover.
The trend was obvious early on, with the first cluster of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. occurring at a suburban Washington state nursing home.
The Trump administration’s federal insurance agency issued guidance in March 2020 that said nursing homes should readmit COVID-positive residents only if the facilities could do so safely with isolation protocols that prevented transmission.
“In an attempt to relieve hospital strain in a time of crisis, states like New York went beyond this guidance, requiring nursing homes to reopen their doors to COVID-positive patients with must-admit orders, regardless of safety and capacity to follow guidance and follow protocols. And as a physician, I disagree with that,” said Rep. Raul Ruiz, California Democrat.
Mr. Ruiz also faulted the Trump administration, saying it watered down nursing home regulations and failed to provide sufficient supplies or steady guidance during the hectic early days of the pandemic.
Bill Hammond, a senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center, said the nursing home episode needs to be closely investigated so it isn’t repeated.
“Even viewed in the best light, this was an act of desperation,” said Mr. Hammond, whose fiscally conservative think tank is based in Albany, New York. “State officials in effect were trying to avert a crisis in the hospitals by creating a crisis in the nursing homes.”
He said transfers of patients from hospitals to nursing homes were likely not the only source of infection in the facilities, but it made a bad situation worse.
Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist, testified about the death of her mother-in-law and father-in-law at an assisted-living residence in New York. She said she is still befuddled by March 2020 orders from then-Gov. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace a year later.
Ms. Dean said there was ample room on the hospital ship docked near New York even as patients returned to nursing homes.
“We need to learn from this tragedy to make sure it never happens again,” Ms. Dean said. “To turn grief into purpose and find out what happened to our parents and our grandparents who trusted us and our leaders to look out for them.”
Vivian Zayas said her mother, Ana Martinez, died after contracting COVID-19 during what should have been a brief stay in a nursing home/rehabilitation facility to recover from treatment for a cyst.
“A minor wound led my mom down a path into a nursing home from which she would never return,” she said.
Ms. Zayas also said New York officials kept families in the dark about their COVID-19 policies.
Witnesses said the tragedy was compounded by New York officials failing to accurately count the number of COVID-19 deaths in its nursing homes.
An audit last year found that the state of New York undercounted the number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes by more than 4,000 during Mr. Cuomo’s tenure.
State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s audit, released Tuesday, found the administration undercounted deaths by 4,071 from April 2020 to February 2021, with 13,147 deaths occurring but only 9,076 reported.
Mr. Cuomo, who rose to fame for his daily virus briefings before falling from grace amid sex-harassment allegations, revoked his controversial March 25, 2020, order in May of that year.
However, The Associated Press estimated that more than 4,500 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York’s nursing homes.
Mr. Cuomo defended his decision at the time by saying it stemmed from the Trump administration’s guidance that patients could return. He said any nursing home could have objected if it could not handle COVID-19 patients.
However, critics said the order did not seem to have an opt-out provision for facilities and was viewed as a mandate.
David Grabowski, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School who was called to the hearing by Democratic lawmakers, faulted the Trump administration for letting the situation in Kirkland, Washington, grow into a national nursing-home crisis in 2020. He said the Biden administration took positive steps by requiring minimum staffing levels for nursing homes and greater transparency of who owns the facilities.
Mr. Hammond said the deadly and costly pandemic should spur Congress and others to prepare for the next virus, “which we know is coming.”
“The time to do that is not when the next virus arrives,” he said, “the time to do that is now.”
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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