Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities now account for around 62,000 coronavirus deaths, 42% of the country’s total. So how is it possible that, months into the pandemic, owners and operators keep failing to fix well-known infection-control basics, like mixing healthy and infected residents and allowing poorly paid staffers to work at multiple facilities,….
Continue ReadingNursing homes
Many 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 ReadingMaryland inspects 226 nursing homes and slaps three with six-figure fines
Maryland officials have wrapped up pandemic-prompted inspections of 226 nursing homes with a pricey rebuke to long-term care facilities that have failed still to safeguard the elderly, sick, and injured from Covid-19, putting them at “immediate jeopardy,” instead. Three facilities were slapped with six-figure fines after state inspectors faulted them in June and July for….
Continue ReadingNursing homes, still coping poorly with Covid-19, turn to lobbyists to shield them from legal accountability
Covid-19 infections and deaths are spiking anew in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, hitting worrisome levels not seen since months ago in the pandemic. The unchecked mess in centers nationwide, but especially in the South and West, is prompting more attention to them — from lobbyists boasting White House ties, health worker “strike….
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….
Continue ReadingTime for nursing homes to pay for staff tests, Maryland and other states say
Imagine in an alternate world in which it is not the poor and ravenous Oliver Twist who implores the world for more porridge, please. Instead, think of the “poor me” cries coming from Bumble the Beadle or Mr. Limbkins, two nefarious guys who exploit kids at the venal workhouse to which Oliver is consigned. Welcome….
Continue ReadingAs stakes soar for Covid-19 vaccine, concerns rise about this one big bet
As the novel coronavirus infections and deaths keep skyrocketing, Americans more and more have been forced into tough risk analyses, and frankly, too often thinking like gamblers. They are, for example, looking a lot at the much-promoted possibility of a Covid-19 vaccine in desperate poker ways — “betting on the come” and playing “river, river….
Continue Reading600 of 15,000 nursing homes get gear as U.S. demands virus tests for staff
Five months after national media sounded alarms about a novel coronavirus savaging a Washington state long-term care center, federal regulators have begun to roust themselves with more vigor to safeguard hundreds of thousands of elderly, sick, and injured residents of nursing homes and other similar facilities. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — which….
Continue Reading57,000 reasons why U.S. needs to fire the top U.S. nursing home watchdog
With the calendar pages flying off to the fall presidential elections, why isn’t today an excellent time for President Trump to thank Seema Verma for her service and send her packing as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the Department of Health and Human Services? Two news organizations — Vox….
Continue Reading