31 March 2021: Pennsylvania's Hidden Data on COVID Nursing Home Deaths

OP-ED: Pennsylvanians deserve answers

Pennsylvania is one of the handful of states that adopted policies similar to the New York's Cuomo admininstration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive, which forced nursing homes to admit COVID patients in order to free up bed space in hospitals. In this op-ed, U.S. representative Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) describes how Governor Tom Wolf's administration has been hiding some public data regarding its policy.

For the first few months, the Pennsylvania Department of Health provided no data on COVID cases and deaths in nursing homes. This left the public with no way of knowing which homes were hit hardest by the virus. When the state finally began releasing data on resident cases and deaths, it was incomplete and contained serious errors.

According to an investigation from Spotlight PA, many of the facilities that the state listed as missing data had met their reporting requirements. The facility managers did not know why their data had not been included in state reports....

The families and loved ones of Pennsylvania’s nursing home victims deserve the truth about Wolf’s actions and their role in the tragic spread of COVID in Pennsylvania’s nursing homes. Governor Wolf must produce all relevant documents and data related to the reporting discrepancies.

Would this issue exist if the hidden data painted a positive, neutral, or even mildly negative picture of the effects of the Wolf administration's COVID nursing homes policies?

In any case, here's a primer on Pennsylvania's COVID nursing home deaths scandal, which echoes New York Governor Cuomo's scandal in many ways.