The five companies Clyburn is contacting — Genesis HealthCare, Life Care Centers of America, Ensign Group, SavaSeniorCare and Consulate Health Care — operate more than 850 facilities for 80,000 residents in 40 states. Each has seen outbreaks at multiple facilities, including more than 1,500 across 187 facilities at Genesis HealthCare, according to the committee.
A spokesperson for SavaSeniorCare declined to comment, writing in an email that this was the first the nursing chain was seeing of the letter and needed to “read and absorb it first.” Life Care Centers of America received the letter and is reviewing it, adding that it will take “some time to evaluate the extent of the information being requested,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.
The remaining companies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Clyburn’s inquiries come amid fresh evidence that failures to control the spread of coronavirus in nursing homes have many causes: About half haven’t been inspected by the states for their preparedness to contain the spread of the virus.
House GOP Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), Clyburn’s counterpart on the coronavirus panel, emphasized state-level failures and said that states that declined to follow federal guidelines saw the worst outbreaks.
“This attempt to pin the tragedy in America’s nursing homes on President Trump is desperate, unconvincing, and completely divorced from reality,“ he said.
Scalise said he’s asked Democrats to call in governors in states where these failures occurred.
Nursing homes, particularly those hit by outbreaks, have suffered equipment and staffing shortages that compounded the risks to residents and employees.
“As workers have fallen sick with the coronavirus or stayed home to self-quarantine, to care for children, or for other reasons, staffing shortages have worsened,” Clyburn wrote in the letters to the nursing home companies. “More than 2,000 nursing homes recently reported staffing shortages to CMS.”
“Family members also report that nursing homes have failed to provide timely information about outbreaks and symptoms experienced by their loved ones—sometimes only notifying them of a problem after their loved ones passed away,” he continued. “Such practices unquestionably fall short of the care Americans expect for the most vulnerable amongst us.”
Though Clyburn’s letters will raise questions about whether the companies acted responsibly, he issued his most pointed questions for CMS Administrator Seema Verma, criticizing her agency’s response to the outbreak.
“Despite CMS’ broad legal authority, the agency has largely deferred to states, local governments, and for-profit nursing homes to respond to the coronavirus crisis,“ Clyburn said in a statement revealing the probe.
The panel is asking CMS for details about how it enforced health and safety regulations at nursing homes as the outbreak worsened. Democrats have faulted the Trump administration’s response to coronavirus for allowing the virus to spread, while hospitals and other health care facilities languished without enough protective gear to stanch the overwhelming early caseload.
CMS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Source: politico.com
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