Tag: nursing homes

FBI, U.S. attorney in Brooklyn probing Cuomo administration on nursing homes

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/cuomo-investigation-fbi-covid-nursing-homes-15957401.php

Excerpt:

The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn have launched an investigation that is examining, at least in part, the actions of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s coronavirus task force in its handling of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities during the pandemic, the Times Union has learned.

The probe by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York is apparently in its early stages and is focusing on the work of some of the senior members of the governor’s task force, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who is not authorized to comment publicly.

Author(s): Brendan J. Lyons

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Times-Union

Worst Governor In America: Those Nursing Homes Are Just Terrible, Aren’t They?

Mary Pat Campbell
Worst governor in America: Those nursing homes are just terrible, aren’t they?

Excerpt:

I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the nursing homes themselves are without blame. As soon as it became obvious that there were outbreaks of the virus in any senior facility, the administrators should have been moving to set up isolation wards and impose more rigorous disinfecting and screening protocols. Some homes did that while others clearly failed. I will also agree that having a cap of $10,000 per violation of the state’s health codes amounts to a slap on the wrist and doesn’t provide much incentive to do better.

With all of that said, however, Cuomo’s team is still completely ignoring the elephant in the room. There were nursing homes in New York at the start of the pandemic that were trying to refuse reentry to residents who tested positive for the novel coronavirus. It was Andrew Cuomo, acting under the extraordinary executive emergency powers granted to him by the state legisature that ordered all of the homes to accept returning residents and forbade them from requiring a negative COVID test as part of the process.

Cuomo also threatened non-compliant nursing homes with crippling fines or the loss of their license to operate. So while some of the nursing homes were clearly failing to take all possible precautions, even the ones who were trying to do the right thing were forbidden from doing so. There is one and only one person responsible for the subsequent deaths in those homes and that’s the person who picked up his pen and issued the orders.

Author(s): Jazz Shaw

Publication Date: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: Hot Air

Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing home deaths calls for serious investigation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/17/opinions/cuomo-covid-nursing-home-deaths-rodgers/index.html

Excerpt:

Late last month, New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued a scathing report about how nursing homes in the state handled Covid-19, including a finding that the state’s Department of Health undercounted Covid deaths at nursing homes by approximately 50%. While the discrepancy didn’t change the overall number of New York Covid-19 deaths, it attributed deaths where a nursing home resident had been transferred to a hospital for treatment to the hospital instead of the nursing home.

This undercount (a term New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker has pushed back on) downplayed the high rates of transmission at nursing homes, at a time when the state mandated that nursing homes re-admit patients with Covid-19 who had been receiving treatment in a hospital, a policy that was reversed a couple of months later. (Cuomo has long said the decision to send recovering Covid-19 patients back to nursing homes was based on federal guidance to do so.)

Last year both the US Department of Justice and New York State legislators issued requests for information about nursing home Covid statistics in New York State, but the Cuomo administration, according to a recent admission by a top Cuomo aide, delayed the release of the figures out of concern about a possible politically motivated federal investigation.

Author(s): Jennifer Rodgers

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: CNN

Cuomo-gate: A Nixonian Scandal Is Engulfing New York

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.dailyposter.com/p/cuomo-gate-a-nixonian-scandal-is

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The Daily Poster had been covering the story for months before it exploded this week. The scandal is a cautionary tale of hubris, megalomania, and corruption that left a literal mountain of preventable COVID deaths in its wake. Now we are about to see whether a blue state’s democratic institutions can hold wrongdoers accountable, or whether America’s culture of impunity can once again protect the powerful from facing any consequences at all.

…..

Two national news outlets today detailed Cuomo’s new campaign of retribution against one lawmaker in his own party who dared to ask questions about constituents and family members who died under Cuomo’s nursing home policies. Cuomo held a press conference to publicly berate the same Democrat, while another New York news outlet reported that other lawmakers are now facing threats.  

….

Cuomo’s political machine received more than $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA), its executives, and its lobbying firms. The health care industry group also funneled more than $450,000 to members of the New York legislature in 2020. 

Author(s): David Sirota

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Daily Poster

NY reveals 59% of Onondaga County’s Covid deaths are senior care facility residents

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2021/02/ny-reveals-59-of-onondaga-countys-covid-deaths-are-senior-care-facility-residents.html

Excerpt:

Residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities for seniors account for 59% of Onondaga County’s total Covid-19 death toll, according to data the state released for the first time over the weekend.

…..

The new data shows nursing home resident deaths account for 52 percent of Onondaga County’s 626 Covid-19 deaths. Before the state released that data, a Syracuse.com investigation estimated that total deaths of nursing home residents were 50% higher than reported by the state and that they accounted for about 60% of all local deaths. Shortly after that story was published, the state Attorney General’s office issued a report that said the state underreported nursing home deaths by 50%.

The new data for the first time gives a breakdown of Covid-19 deaths among residents of Onondaga County assisted living facilities and adult care homes. These facilities provide non-medical services to adults unable to live independently. The data shows 40 residents of these facilities in Onondaga County died of Covid-19 as of Feb. 6. Those deaths combined with nursing home resident deaths total 367, or 59% of the county’s 626 Covid-19 fatalities.

Author(s): James T. Mulder

Publication Date: 8 February 2021

Publication Site: syracuse.com

Cuomo Accepts Some Blame in Nursing Home Scandal but Denies Cover-Up

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/nyregion/cuomo-nursing-homes.html

Excerpt:

More than 15,000 people have died from the coronavirus in New York’s nursing homes and long-term care facilities. But as recently as late January, the state was reporting only about 8,500 fatalities, excluding virus-related deaths that occurred physically outside of those facilities, such as in hospitals.

About two weeks ago, the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, accused the Cuomo administration of severely undercounting those deaths connected to nursing homes. Hours later, the state updated those numbers, adding thousands of deaths to the official tally. Since then, a court order has resulted in more updates, further increasing the number of deaths.

Ms. James’s assertion of an undercount of total deaths of nursing home residents fueled accusations that the Cuomo administration may have artificially depressed the number of those deaths to try to deflect blame for a policy set early in the pandemic: sending nursing home residents who had been hospitalized with the coronavirus back to the nursing homes.

The governor has said the state was following federal guidelines in returning the residents and trying to increase hospital capacity, assertions that he repeated on Monday, while also denying any suggestion that he was making any decision because of political calculations. “These decisions are not political decisions,” he said.

Author(s): Jesse McKinley

Publication Date: 15 February 2021

Publication Site: NY Times

Start apologizing, Gov. Cuomo — and stop the lies

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2021/02/15/start-apologizing-gov-cuomo-and-stop-the-lies/

Excerpt:

Indeed, it seems to have started as soon as The Post’s Bernadette Hogan first revealed the existence of the deadly March 25 order by asking about it at a press conference weeks later. At that April 20 presser, the gov pretended he’d never heard of the order before. (And never mind that he is tight as a bug with the state hospital lobby, which plainly requested the order if only to clear beds for more urgent COVID cases. Nor that Cuomo is a notorious micromanager unlikely to let such a deadly mandate be issued without his personal signoff.)

It’s at about this point that the state Department of Health suddenly started reporting “nursing home COVID deaths” in a way unique to New York — leaving out residents who died only after transfer to a hospital. This, even as the DOH continued to record the full truth but refused to share it.

Indeed, the Cuomoites stonewalled Freedom of Information Law requests from the Empire Center and the Associated Press for most of the next year — again, starting long before the feds showed any interest.

The state only finally started releasing that info after 1) Attorney General Tish James’ report outlined the basic fact that the nursing-home death toll was 50 percent higher than Cuomo or Health Commissioner Howard Zucker had been admitting, and 2) a judge outright ordered the DOH to comply with the Empire Center FOIL request.

Author(s): Editorial board

Publication Date: 15 February 2021

Publication Site: NY Post

Democrats slam ‘lying’ Andrew Cuomo over COVID-19 nursing home scandal

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2021/02/15/democrats-slam-cuomo-over-covid-19-nursing-home-cover-up/

Excerpt:

Fellow Democratic legislators in New York weren’t buying Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s explanation Monday as to why he refused for months to release a true accounting of nursing home residents who died from the coronavirus.

Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), whose uncle died from COVID-19, bluntly said that “all of it is BS” and a cover-up.

“They could have given us the information back in May and June of last year. They chose not to,” Kim said after hearing Cuomo was blaming the Department of Justice probe for delays in releasing the accurate coronavirus death tally of nursing home residents.

Author(s): Carl Campanile and Nolan Hicks

Publication Date: 15 February 2021

Publication Site: NY Post

Cuomo Unmasked

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.city-journal.org/cuomo-hid-ny-state-nursing-home-deaths-in-spring-2020

Excerpt:

Cuomo ducked press demands for nursing-home mortality data throughout 2020, even as every other state made the information public. While New York admitted to about 7,000 nursing home deaths, informed estimates put the real count at around 12,000; the state refused to confirm the numbers. Last month, Attorney General Letitia James released a report acknowledging that the real death toll was close to 13,000. In reaction to this news, Cuomo snapped, “Who cares? 33 [percent], 28 [percent]. Died in a hospital. Died in a nursing home. They died.”

What this episode reveals is Andrew Cuomo’s massive egotism. He was elevated by a fawning national media into a preposterously salvific role last spring and summer. Throughout the course of the pandemic, the governor gave daily televised briefings in which he hailed his own performance as a beacon of leadership. Cuomo delivered such apothegms as, “It’s going to be hard, there is no doubt. But at the same time it is going to be OK.” He also made a point, continuously, of calling the novel coronavirus the “European virus,” presumably in counterpoint to Trump’s calling it the “China virus,” though it is widely recognized that the virus originated in China, even if some infected people may have caught it in Italy before bringing it to America.

Author(s): Seth Barron

Publication Date: 12 February 2021

Publication Site: City Journal

COVID-19: Cuomo Admits Lack Of Transparency On Reporting Nursing Home Data Amid Backlash

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://dailyvoice.com/new-york/northsalem/politics/covid-19-cuomo-admits-lack-of-transparency-on-reporting-nursing-home-data-amid-backlash/803321/

Excerpt:

In his first public comments on a top aide’s admission that his administration “froze” when asked by both federal and state officials to release data on COVID-19 nursing home fatalities, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the lack of transparency was a mistake.

Cuomo said “there was a delay,” in reporting the data, and that void led to “skepticism, cynicism and conspiracy theories which furthered confusion” in a news briefing held in Albany on Monday, Feb. 15.

“We should have provided more information faster,” Cuomo said. “We were too focused on doing the job and addressing the crisis of the moment. I take total responsibility for that.”

Author(s): Joe Lombardi

Publication Date: 15 February 2021

Publication Site: Daily Voice

Cuomo Accuses NY Lawmakers of ‘Extortion’ Over Calls to Investigate Nursing Home Deaths

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cuomo-accuses-ny-lawmakers-of-extortion-over-calls-to-investigate-nursing-home-deaths/

Excerpt:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday blasted state lawmakers who have threatened to rescind his emergency powers and open investigations into his administration’s coverup of its mishandling of nursing home coronavirus deaths.

“You can’t use a subpoena or the threat of investigation to leverage a person,” Cuomo said in a briefing on Monday. “That’s a crime, it’s called abuse of process, it’s called extortion.”

He also defended his earlier policy that forced nursing homes to accept coronavirus-positive patients after they were discharged from hospitals, saying that it was not sick residents who spread the virus within the nursing homes amid New York’s first wave in the spring, but visitors and staff.

Of 613 nursing homes in the state, 365 received a COVID-positive patient from the hospital, Cuomo said. Ninety-eight percent of nursing homes that admitted a patient from the hospital already had COVID in their facility before the patient was admitted, he said.

Author(s): Brittany Bernstein

Publication Date: 15 February 2021

Publication Site: National Review

State goes over 100,000 dose mark in vaccinations of long-term care residents and staff

Mary Pat Campbell
State goes over 100,000 dose mark in vaccinations of long-term care residents and staff

Excerpt:

More than 110,000 doses of COVID vaccine have been administered in the state’s long-term care facilities since late December, and state official estimate they are about two-thirds of the way to completing vaccinations of those residents.

Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week show that 110,016 vaccines have been administered through the long-term care facility partnership through which CVS and Walgreens pharmacists have vaccinated residents staff at nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Connecticut.

Author(s): DAVE ALTIMARI

Publication Date: 12 February 2021

Publication Site: CT Mirror