With the pandemic tearing through the United States and overwhelming U.S. health care system, we pause from the grim news to tally some of the nation’s blessings in this time. We can be thankful for the courage, fortitude, dedication, and skill of an army of health workers of all kinds. They have put themselves….
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Neglect-and-abuse deaths send nursing homes’ pandemic toll from bad to worse
The coronavirus pandemic’s terrible toll on nursing homes and other long-term care facilities may be much worse than now estimated, as resident advocates, watchdog groups, and experts tally “excess deaths” in the facilities — perhaps one additional casualty beyond any two formally attributed to Covid-19. These fatalities are unacceptable, resulting from frantic and low-paid health….
Continue ReadingGrim reprise in nursing homes: four-fold infection hike and doubling deaths
Coronavirus cases are spiking among residents and staff at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. They increased four-fold between May’s end and late October — even as deaths among the vulnerable also doubled, disturbing new data show. Those are the findings of Rebecca Gorges and Tamara Konetzka, University of Chicago researchers who analyzed federal….
Continue ReadingCaregiver staffing a key issue in shielding vulnerable in nursing facilities and in their own homes
Nursing homes put their residents at heightened health risks by scrimping on personnel costs and failing to deal with significant staffing shortfalls, especially as the coronavirus inflicted some of its highest death and infection tolls on the elderly, sick, and injured in long-term care, media investigations have found. The profit-focus by health providers is not….
Continue ReadingAs nation focused on vote tallies, coronavirus cases and deaths kept soaring
While Americans have been riveted for days about incremental shifts in election results, other confounding numbers raced ever higher and into worrisome places. Just consider these numbers: 128,000, 9.6 million plus, and 235,000 and more. “Covid, covid, covid. By the way, on Nov. 4 you won’t hear about it anymore,” President Trump asserted during his….
Continue ReadingAs virus burned through nursing homes, inspectors cleared most of infection violations
Disturbing new data shows that a much-promoted plan by federal watchdogs to protect vulnerable residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities from Covid-19 resulted in dismal outcomes, with inspectors dispatched by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services largely dismissing infection-control concerns as the deadly pandemic raged. “During the first six months of….
Continue ReadingNursing homes’ continuing crisis inflicts big toll on residents with dementia
Even as news organizations reported that the coronavirus pandemic has taken a grievous toll on seniors institutionalized with dementia, a presidential panel on nursing home care split over common sense but limp recommendations on how the nation might reduce Covid-19’s savaging of the old, sick, and injured in long-term care facilities. The unsurprising, 180-plus pages….
Continue ReadingMany Maryland nursing homes fined in state’s pandemic-related check-up
It turns out there is more to be said about Maryland’s recently completed, pandemic-related checks on hundreds of nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Three facilities, indeed, got expensive rebukes from state inspectors, but dozens more were hit with milder fines that also suggest widespread issues in the institutions, notably with the crucial concern of….
Continue ReadingLoneliness and fear taking big toll on locked down elderly, sick, and injured
For the old, sick, and injured who are institutionalized, the Covid-19 pandemic and the efforts to halt the spread of the disease into care facilities has created debilitating side-effects: isolation, loneliness, silence, fear, and worries of abandonment. Facility lockdowns, combined with the relentless governmental bungling of the coronavirus response, are taking a terrible toll that….
Continue ReadingU.S. showered sketchy nursing homes with millions in Covid emergency aid
In response to the shattering harms of the Covid-19 pandemic, Congress sought to shore up the U.S. health care system with billions of dollars in emergency aid. But the federal agency that helps to oversee the institutional care for the elderly, sick, and injured performed poorly as a steward of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. The Health….
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