(4/27) Information on congregate living facilities with outbreaks (two or more cases) has been added to the NCDHHS COVID-19 dashboard. You can find the list here.
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(4/24) The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is reportingnearly 12-hundred confirmed COVID-19 cases and 101 deaths at nursing homes across the state. In Henderson County, 125 of the 158 COVID-19 cases and all 13 deaths are linked to long term care facilities. An analysis of federal data by North Carolina Health News found histories of short staffing at more than three-quarters of 19 nursing homes identified in public records and/or media accounts as having COVID-19 outbreaks. Founding editor Rose Hoban spoke with BPR's Helen Chickering about their findings.
North Carolina Health News has been following the rise in COVID-19 cases in NC nursing homes, what have you learned? Thomas Goldsmith, a reporter who works with me, took a deep dive into federal databases for a story we ran on Monday. He checked the amount of staffing and we could see that - of the facilities that we know their names, because the state hasn’t yet identified all of the facilities with outbreaks - most of them had histories of sub-par staffing.
Any here in Western North Carolina? First off, that story ranMonday when there were outbreaks in 37 facilities. Now there are 42 facilities that have outbreaks, so this is a rapidly changing situation. In our analysis, one of those facilities was in Henderson county , one in Burke County with poor staffing. And just something to know, consumers can learn about nursing homes at the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid website. And the website is called Nursing Home Compare and they have lots of information for nursing homes and one of the things they rate is how good is staffing.
Your report also raised concerns about nursing aides.These are people who don’t make a lot of money. Many of them make in the low teens per hour. They’re being asked to do their work now that’s very intimate,nCare for people in a nursing home can be intense. You’re turning people in bed. You’re walking with them as you hold their arm. You’re feeding them. It is a time-intensive business, that requires hands-on care by people who often are making thirteen dollars an hour, if that? So, many of these places are plagued by short staffing to start with. Now add COVID to the mix.
Your thoughts about what more should be done to protect assisted living/nursing facilities?Well, right now it feels like there’s not enough, but things are changing quickly. You and I were both on a call this morning with the governor’s COVID task force and Adam Sholar, who heads North Carolina’s
Health Facilities Association, he had this to say:
“So 57% of our nursing homes have a week or less supply of gowns, 40% have a week or less supply of surgical masks and 45% have a week or less of in 95 masks as the state builds its supplies and its stockpile. I just asked that we remember this - SNFs (Skilled Nursing Facilities) have needs as well, nursing facilities have needs,”
The state is encouraging skilled nursing facilities to test their residents who are symptomatic, and it seems like the guidance may be changing to also include testing people without symptoms. But to test, you need to have enough personal protective equipment for the staff doing the testing, doing all that care. Remember, this all changes essentially daily - the guidance, the number of outbreaks, where they are.You know, West Virginia and Oregon are states where they’ve decided to test every resident in every skilled nursing facility both symptomatic and asymptomatic. There are 38,000 residents in skilled nursing facilities in the state, so there’s a lot of folks to care for and a LOT of folks to test. Currently if North Carolina decided to do that, it would take days -weeks - to test all 38,000 because we just don’t have enough testing supplies.
What’s on the burner at NC Health News? We have as story on Sunday about service industry workers and coronavirus and Thomas Goldsmith is doing a follow-up story on testing, and he has told me multiple times this week, “it’s changed again!”. This is a very fluid situation, it’s changing constantly.
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