Emergency medical services personnel carry a patient from an ambulance to Cobble Hill health Center in Brooklyn, April 18, 2020.
The Empire Center for Public Policy, a nonprofit organization, released a research report on April 18, stating that the state’s executive order requiring nursing homes not to turn away infected residents at the beginning of last year’s outbreak likely led to a spike in nursing Home deaths. More than 1,000 nursing home residents died as a result of this order.
On April 7 of last year, a nursing home resident in New York was taken to the hospital after contracting the disease.
According to the Empire Center for Public Policy Research, the New York State Department of Health’s March 25, 2020, directive to return confirmed COVID-19 patients from hospitals to nursing homes was statistically significant in relation to the increase in nursing home deaths.
Members of the research center told the New York Post that they compared the mortality rate of infected patients sent from hospitals to nursing homes with the mortality rate of infected patients who did not leave the hospital and concluded that there was a “statistically significant level of confidence of 99 percent.
The research center noted that between late March and early May of last year, 6,327 infected residents entered nursing homes during the implementation of the controversial measure, and that some hundreds, and likely more than 1,000, of those deaths were related to the decree.
According to the New York Post, a draft of the analysis states, “These findings contradict the main conclusions of the state Department of Health’s report on the nursing home outbreak, which was released on July 6. The state report concluded that ‘admission policies (for accepting infected patients) were not a significant factor in the deaths of nursing home residents’ and that ‘there were no data showing a consistent relationship between admission policies and increased deaths.'”
In contrast, the state Department of Health report attributed the spread of the virus in nursing homes to infected but asymptomatic nursing home staff and visitors. This conclusion was repeatedly cited by Governor Cuomo, who denied responsibility, but the New York Post reported that Cuomo warned on March 29 of last year that the virus was like “a fire in a haystack” in nursing homes.
The research center said nursing homes outside New York City were the first to be affected by the decree, with an average of 9.3 more deaths per nursing home that received infected patients than those that did not.
The 18-day analysis concluded that Cuomo’s March 25 executive order was not the sole or primary cause of the spike in deaths of nursing home residents with the disease. Bill Hammond, a senior researcher at the center, said the executive order clearly had some impact and made the situation worse.
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