Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to Refrain From Taking Action If Nursing Homes Under-Identify Coronavirus Cases

Medical experts and healthcare institutions are concerned about how the industry might be omitting this crucial information after being given the choice to not provide the data.

This could limit the accuracy of the federal data collection effort to fully understand the impact of the pandemic to the elderly according to a news report.

The administration's decision to not require nursing homes to report COVID-19 cases that happened before May 6 was included in the memo published earlier this month by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Under-identification of cases

Under the FAQs section, one of the questions asked if the facilities were required to report data prior to the date of the interim final rule, which was May 6th.

The response was that there was no requirement to collect older data despite that the system was capable of retrieving data as far back as January 2020. It continued that the CMS would refrain from taking action if a nursing home failed to accurately report information at the given time.

Various news outlets covered that nursing homes failed to report coronavirus infections before the outbreak. These facilities were now scheduled for investigation for cases of neglect. More than 20,000 residents from nursing homes died prior to May 6th. This can also pose as an undercount of the true figure.

Speaking on behalf of the University of California San Francisco, nursing professor emerita Charlene Harrington said she suspected there was a "huge under-identification" of the coronavirus in nursing homes. She believed that the underlying problem was that local authorities were not prioritizing nursing homes, where the most susceptible groups lived in.

Harvard Medical School professor David Grabowski said that there was no way to get ahead of the pandemic unless health experts had data to tell them there was a problem, like shortages of personal protective equipment or of understaffing or poor management.

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Patients at nursing homes being "wiped out"

Last month, when infections and deaths in nursing homes began rising, the Democrats in Congress have gradually become more critical against the administration's measures to assist these healthcare facilities.

Senator Ron Wyden said in a joint statement that the federal government's response to the ongoing crisis in the nursing homes of the United States was inadequate. He said, while the country's most vulnerable groups were more at risk than ever, the administration failed to make necessary data available for weeks.

The nursing home industry acknowledged that knowing the scope of the virus and which facilities needed priority was crucial amid the reopening of regular operations. Harrington suspected the government was helping the nursing home industry through covering up death rates in their facilities. 

LeadingAge, a non-profit organization for long-term care facilities, said that older Americans were taking their own precautionary measures to avoid being entirely "wiped out" from the pandemic. The most feasible solution was better access to testing and protective equipment.

The Center for Diseases Control and Prevention launched a tool last month for these facilities to report COVID-19 cases and deaths. On top of that, the program allowed the input of medical supplies and equipment, staffing, and testing access.