All it takes is a bit of common sense to understand that sending coronavirus patients into nursing homes is a bad idea. Unfortunately, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo realized this only after the rest of the country criticized his policy that forced nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients from nearby hospitals. Cuomo reversed the policy last week, but the damage had already been done.
The problem is that we can’t know for sure just how many nursing home residents died as a result of Cuomo’s policy because the New York government has been quietly omitting deaths from its recent reports on nursing homes and long-term care facilities, as the Daily Caller reported today.
The New York State Department of Health’s original policy required officials to report every single coronavirus death related to a nursing home regardless of whether that death took place in the nursing home or after a resident was transported to a hospital. But in early May, the department made a slight change to this policy, asking its officials to disclose only the coronavirus-related deaths of patients who died while physically inside the nursing home. Deaths that occur outside of the facility are no longer counted, even if the patient contracted the virus within a nursing home.
New York’s original policy was the right one: It shouldn’t matter whether a COVID-19 patient dies in a nursing home or in a hospital because if that patient was housed within a nursing home, then that patient undoubtedly exposed dozens of others to the coronavirus as well. And it’s impossible to figure out just how many nursing home residents have been affected by the coronavirus if New York omits an entire group of patients.
There is no medical benefit associated with this omission. If anything, excluding out-of-facility deaths undermines the public health by interfering with health officials’ attempts to track the spread of the coronavirus and contain its hot spots. It’s difficult to see this as anything but a cover-up. Rather than shield and protect the elderly from the coronavirus, Cuomo turned his state’s nursing homes into breeding grounds. And now, it seems the state government is trying to hide the extent of the damage.
There might be another explanation, but Cuomo, or any other New York official for that matter, has yet to offer one. He should do so immediately — the integrity of his government is on the line.
