20 November 2020: Excess Deaths Reveal Hidden Problems at Nursing Homes

Not just COVID: Nursing home neglect deaths surge in shadows

This article explores nursing home deaths beyond COVID-19, with some startling findings pointing to failures of both ethics and oversight. Starting with excess deaths:

A nursing home expert who analyzed data from the country’s 15,000 facilities for The Associated Press estimates that for every two COVID-19 victims in long-term care, there is another who died prematurely of other causes. Those “excess deaths” beyond the normal rate of fatalities in nursing homes could total more than 40,000 since March.

These extra deaths are roughly 15 percent more than you’d expect at nursing homes already facing tens of thousands of deaths each month in a normal year.

The analysis was provided the University of California's Institute of Aging's Stephen Kaye, who also found that many of these excess deaths took place at nursing homes where COVID-19 ran rampant:

Comparing mortality rates at homes struck by COVID-19 with ones that were spared, Kaye also found that the more the virus spread through a home, the greater the number of deaths recorded for other reasons. In homes where at least 3 in 10 residents had the virus, for example, the rate of death for reasons besides the virus was double what would be expected without a pandemic.

That suggests the care of those who didn’t contract the virus may have been impacted as healthcare workers were consumed attending to residents ill from COVID-19 or were left short-handed as the pandemic infected employees themselves.

Official state policies like New York's 25 March 2020 directive that forced nursing homes to blindly admit COVID-19 patients without testing to determine whether or not they were still contagious amplified the situation described above. The death toll associated with the directive is therefore greater than the number of deceased nursing home residents who tested positive for COVID-19.

The article also cites the state-mandated prohibition on visits by family members, which contributed to a deteriorating level of care provided to nursing home residents. Since family members both provide additional care for residents and take action to prevent neglect when observed, their state government-mandated absence ensured that the declining quality of care in these facilities went undetected. Governor Cuomo provided a shield of legal immunity for neglect to New York's nursing homes operators, many of whom are counted among his campaign contributors, during the pandemic.