14 January 2022: Michigan's Whitmer Administration Disputes Auditor's Report Finding State Underreported COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Whitmer Administration Disputes Pending Report On Nursing Home Deaths

The administration of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is disputing a soon-to-be-released report from Michigan's Auditor General finding her administration grossly undercounted the full extent of COVID deaths among residents of Michigan's nursing and long-term-care homes. Here's a short summary:

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration disputed the methodology and conclusions in a pending report that is expected to say there were nearly 30% more coronavirus-related deaths tied to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in Michigan than reported by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS).

Auditors plan to release their review next week. But in a rare step, MDHHS Director Elizabeth Hertel sought to publicly preempt it by questioning how the data was compiled.

Quick side bar: the "rare step" being mentioned confirms the Whitmer administration views the report as highly damaging to its interests in remaining in power. Picking up now on how the administration is attempting to discredit the auditor general's pending report:

In a letter written Sunday and released Wednesday, Hertel referenced “serious concerns” to the state auditor general’s office — including with its plan to combine COVID-19 deaths at facilities that are subject to state or federal reporting requirements and those that are not. That would add 1,036 deaths to the 5,675 that long-term care facilities had reported as of early July, almost half of the additional 1,700 or so deaths to be revealed.

Hertel also said auditors will define reportable deaths differently from a federal standard. They are counting residents who were discharged before their deaths, including those who recovered from COVID-19 and returned home or went to hospice. Also being added are residents who were hospitalized for a non-virus reason like a fall but were infected in the hospital, and residents who lived at independent or assisted living facilities that share a campus with a nursing home, she said.

Hertel's strategy of disputing Michigan's audited findings is similar to that used by New York's Cuomo administration, which played similar semantic games to dispute the full extent of COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents. In New York, any deaths of nursing home residents that occurred outside a nursing home wasn't counted to the total attributed to those facilities. This practice allowed the Cuomo administration to conceal the full extent of COVID deaths among nursing home residents, who often died after being transferred out of the facility, whether to hospitals, hospices or other locations.

In particular, her attempt to omit deaths of residents of shared campus facilities is really questionable, because many serve the same highly vulnerable population of patients. The difference between residents in the various care settings within each of these campuses would mainly be determined by their level of care requirements. Since they would also share staffing, it is very reasonable to consider these to be extended facilities of the nursing homes.

Keep in mind that all this is happening *before* the auditor general's report has been made public. There's much more to come.