DHS to name nursing homes with COVID-19 cases
The Department of Health Services plans to begin naming nursing homes with COVID-19 cases this week, after previously saying they were hesitant to release the information.
Elizabeth Goodsitt, DHS spokeswoman, said they’re doing so to be in line with an interim final rule published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that require the facilities to report information on COVID-19 cases among facility residents and staff.
The information will help monitor trends in infection and allow public health to do additional testing and contact tracing. Goodsitt said those in nursing homes are among the most vulnerable when it comes to COVID-19.
She said publishing the names of the facilities will “provide peace of mind to families who cannot visit or check on their loved ones during these unprecedented times and provide additional transparency about where infections may be occurring.”
LeadingAge Wisconsin and Wisconsin Health Care Association and the Wisconsin Center for Assisted Living said Saturday that they have serious concerns about how the listing might be presented by DHS and interpreted by the public and media.
LeadingAge Wisconsin CEO John Sauer said that even the best nursing homes may experience COVID-19 and that presence of COVID-19 doesn’t indicate quality of care or a poorly run facility.
“The DHS list is just a list,” Sauer said. “It does not begin to tell the story behind the love and compassionate care provided by Wisconsin’s nursing facilities.”
John Vander Meer, CEO of the Wisconsin Health Care Association and the Wisconsin Center for Assisted Living, said that nursing homes have been “proactive in informing” public health departments, residents and their families, employees and state officials since the beginning of the public health emergency.
“These caregiver heroes deserve our respect and support for the work they do,” he said.
The presence of the disease in a facility may reflect efforts by the provider to admit people with COVID-19 from the community, greater access to testing and that some residents and staff may be asymptomatic and unknowingly brought the virus into the facility, according to the associations.
Last month, the department began identifying outbreaks by region and setting.
At the time, DHS Secretary-designee Andrea Palm told reporters they want to provide as much information as they can to help people understand the status of the epidemic and advance public health.
“We have previously not given information that would identify an individual case and where they live,” she said at the April 29 media briefing. “Long-term care facilities are people’s residence, and so we are interested in protecting the privacy of the residents of those facilities.”
As of May 6, there were 123 investigations into long-term care facilities, according to DHS. Fifty-two had a single confirmed case and 81 facilities had less than five confirmed cases. The range was 1 to 80 confirmed cases, with the median number being two and the average being seven.
As of Sunday, DHS linked 169 deaths to long-term care facilities, although the agency has only systemically collected data on whether deaths occurred at group housing facilities since April 8.
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