Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Many Nursing Homes Fought Federal Mandates For Emergency Plans. Now They Are COVID Hot Spots.
ProPublica/New Mexico In Depth/ The News & Observer: Nursing Homes Fought Federal Emergency Plan Requirements For Years. Now, They’re Coronavirus Hot Spots.
On Dec. 15, 2016, the nation’s largest nursing home lobby wrote a letter to Donald Trump, congratulating the president-elect and urging him to roll back new regulations on the long-term care industry. One item on the wish list was a recently issued emergency preparedness rule. It required nursing homes to draw up plans for hazards such as an outbreak of a new infectious disease.Trump’s election, the American Health Care Association, or AHCA, wrote, had demonstrated that voters opposed “extremely burdensome” rules that endangered the industry’s thin profit margins. (Furlow, Brosseau and Arnsdorf, 5/29)
ABC News: Family Sues Nursing Home Over Death Of Army Veteran From Coronavirus
A grieving family has filed a lawsuit against Hollywood Premier Healthcare Center, a skilled nursing home in California, after their loved one died from COVID-19. Vincent Martin, an 84-year-old Army veteran, died on April 4 and his daughters, Elizabeth Gagliano and Kathryn Sessinghaus, and his wife, Emma Martin, are alleging in a lawsuit that the facility mishandled the novel coronavirus outbreak, leading to Martin's death. (Chen, 5/31
Stat: When Her Mom's Time Came, Covid-19 Kept Them Apart
When Sharon Levine picked up, the person on the other end was sobbing. It was the nurse practitioner at her mother’s nursing home outside of New York. She had to be calling with some sort of news, but she was too overwhelmed: Covid-19 had entered the facility and residents were dying and staff members were getting infected and they were out of coronavirus tests and they didn’t seem to have enough protective gear and everyone was just so sick — and for a moment, the roles were reversed, and it wasn’t clear who was caring for whom. (Boodman, 6/1)
Detroit Free Press: 3 Metro Detroit Nursing Homes Report More Than 100 Coronavirus Cases
New answers about which nursing homes have been most severely impacted by COVID-19 came Friday when Michigan officials released cumulative case data on facilities that house the state’s most vulnerable population. But the accuracy of some of the numbers has been called into question by previous Free Press reporting. After the state's release, some said they don't trust the counts. (Anderson, Hall and Tanner, 5/29)
