Wisconsin health officials reclassified nearly 1,000 COVID-19 fatalities, tying them to long-term care facilities after previously reporting the deaths occurred in “unknown” housing settings.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services adjusted the data in the past two weeks and now reports 45% of COVID-19 deaths happened in long-term care facilities after the state previously linked 26% to 30% of total virus fatalities to these Wisconsin facilities, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The early percentages ranked lower compared to neighboring states and have raised questions among Republicans in the state and health experts about the accuracy of Wisconsin’s data on long-term care deaths.
According to Gov. Tony Evers’s administration, the change in data reports is part of a typical process of updating state health data regarding coronavirus fatalities. Additionally, Wisconsin has a decentralized system collecting data from local health departments.
WISCONSIN LAWMAKERS SCUTTLE GOV. EVERS’ BUILDING PLAN
“The Evers administration severely undercounted COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities, making their response to COVID-19 appear much better than it was,” a spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin told the Washington Examiner.
The reclassification of 1,000 deaths tied to long-term care facilities was performed after the Wisconsin Department of Health Services took an extra nonrequired step to improve transparency about the locations where COVID-19 deaths occurred, the agency said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“We came up with the solution to pull an address list of long-term care facilities from the regulators and match those addresses against the patient address for records with “unknowns” for group housing, for patients who died of COVID-19,” a DHS spokeswoman said.
Wisconsin nursing homes are required to inform federal regulators how many residents died of COVID-19. There is no similar requirement for assisted living facilities, which are state-regulated. Assisted living facilities also house more elderly adults than nursing homes.
The state’s DHS underscored how the reclassification did not change the number of reported deaths but pinpointed where some previously unknown deaths took place. The agency also said it used data provided by 98 local and tribal health departments.
DHS added that initial data from local health departments is sometimes incomplete upon submission and later updated once more information about patient autopsies are revealed.
David Grabowski, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School who specializes in long-term care, told the Journal Sentinel, “This is not something that you should have to go back and correct after the fact.”
“You can look at 40-some [other] states that seem to be able to do this in real time,” he added.
Reclassification of COVID-19 fatalities has been a rolling issue across the nation, varying by state. Last April, New York City updated its fatality account by adding 3,700 additional deaths after health officials included people who never tested positive but were presumed to have died by the virus.
Ngozi Ezike, the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said in October, “Everyone who’s listed as a COVID death doesn’t mean that was the cause of death,” noting data could change if autopsies confirm an alternative cause.
State Sen. Alberta Darling, a Republican, called for an investigation by the Legislative Audit Committee into the way the Wisconsin DHS handled the data.
Some Republican lawmakers also alleged the state’s vaccine rollout to long-term care facilities has been slow and drafted a letter to the Democratic governor, questioning the current vaccine disbursement process.
One of those lawmakers is Rep. Mike Gallagher, who represents Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District. “Considering … concerning reports that long-term care facilities were far deadlier than DHS originally reported, it’s imperative we do everything we can to protect this community as soon as possible,” he told the Washington Examiner on Friday.
Mark Jefferson, executive director of the Wisconsin GOP, told the Washington Examiner the advent of newly reported long-term care deaths “raises serious concerns about what else [Evers’s] administration has been hiding during the pandemic.”
“It appears this time that Gov. Tony Evers’ continued resistance to transparency may have hampered the state’s ability to ensure that some of Wisconsin’s most vulnerable were protected,” Jefferson wrote in a readout.
“Wisconsinites deserve to know if Gov. Tony Evers’ incompetence and secrecy cost Wisconsin lives,” he added.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Washington Examiner reached out Evers’s office but did not immediately receive a response.
