New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy‘s administration was warned last March that allowing COVID-19 patients into nursing homes would result in patient deaths, according to a new report.
New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli held a conference call on March 31 with hundreds of long-term care facility operators in which unidentified participants raised concerns about Murphy’s policy, NJ.com reported on Sunday.
“Patients will die,” a nursing home administrator said on the call, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by NJ Advance Media. “You understand that by asking us to take COVID patients, by demanding we take COVID patients, that patients will die in nursing homes that wouldn’t have otherwise died had we screened them out.”
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Persichilli suggested administrators “should create a separate wing or unit and care for those suspected or confirmed COVID-19” in an effort to isolate infected patients, a proposal that an administrator on the call said was not feasible, according to the report.
“You have asked us to separate safely and create our own wing and take in COVID-19′s from the hospital,” an administrator reportedly told the health commissioner. “The problem, of course, is there is no separating safely. It’s almost certain that even though you have staff only on that unit, something will migrate.”
The reported warning about the impending loss of life was met with criticism by New Jersey Senate Republicans.
“Nursing home administrators were crystal clear when they told Commissioner Persichilli they couldn’t safely admit COVID-19 patients without putting their other residents at risk,” state Sen. Joe Pennacchio said. “They said COVID would spread through their facilities and people would die as a result of the dangerous order. Tragically, the Murphy administration ignored their prescient warnings, and thousands of people died.”
On March 31 of last year, Murphy approved Persichilli’s directive, saying that “no patient/resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the post-acute care setting solely based on a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19.” The governor required patients be tested prior to discharge but forbade nursing homes from requiring diagnostic tests of discharged patients so long as patients were deemed “medically stable” by doctors.
Republicans have panned Murphy’s directive as “bad policy.”
“We were stuffing some of the most sensitive and weakest people, physically, with other people who were sick and weak physically,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew said. “How anybody could have ever thought that that was a good idea, in general, was just a bad policy.”
In light of the allegations, some Republicans in the state Senate, who have already held hearings examining the New Jersey government’s coronavirus response, are moving to curb emergency powers granted to Murphy amid the pandemic.
“The Emergency Health Powers Act is designed as a temporary tool to ensure government can respond quickly and efficiently in a crisis environment,” Pennacchio said in a statement. “With repeated extensions of the declaration that give the governor inflated powers, Murphy has gone too far and abused the intent. It is time for New Jersey to return to governing as stipulated in the State Constitution. The role of the elected Legislature must be restored.”
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In addition to Murphy, five governors, all Democrats, enacted policies that directed nursing homes to admit patients who had been hospitalized for COVID-19. One of the governors who implemented a similar policy, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, now faces two investigations, one of which is an “impeachment investigation” by the New York state Assembly, as a result of the policy as well as mounting allegations of sexual harassment, which Cuomo has denied.
Cuomo issued a directive on March 25 to nursing homes and long-term care facilities that prohibited them from discriminating against residents who had tested positive for the coronavirus. Though it was not an order, nursing homes in New York interpreted it that way and took in COVID-19-positive residents until the directive was invalidated in May.
Representatives for Murphy and the Department of Health did not immediately reply to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.
