Editorial: Nursing homes, covid and what’s right
Share this post:
Just because something isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it is acceptable.
On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department informed Gov. Tom Wolf that it would not be opening an investigation into whether this order to Pennsylvania nursing homes requiring admission of residents treated for covid-19 in hospitals violated federal law.
Pennsylvania wasn’t the only state that made that kind of move early on in the coronavirus pandemic. Michigan, New Jersey and New York did, too. All four states were informed in August that the federal government was taking a closer look at those decisions. Michigan was also informed Thursday that no further investigations would be done.
Nursing homes were early epicenters of covid-19 infections. The first known outbreak was in a Washington state nursing home. In Pennsylvania, Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Beaver County garnered early attention as the coronavirus spread through the building, with more than 300 staff and residents testing positive and at least 76 residents and one housekeeper dying of the disease. A federal grand jury is investigating Brighton.
But after reviewing state records and “additional information,” the Justice Department says there is nothing to pursue.
Legally, that may be true. Government bodies like the state are indemnified against certain responsibilities for actions taken in the public good — especially in emergency situations. As no one had really dealt with a pandemic of the scope of covid-19 in the last 100 years or so, it is understandable that people were working without a playbook.
The law is not the only measure of how things should be handled, however. The state government should constantly be evaluating its own decisions, recommendations and practices to create or perfect better protocols for handling things in the future.
Covid-19 was most dangerous to the aged and medically compromised — exactly the people who are admitted to nursing homes. To date, 27,820 Pennsylvanians died in the pandemic, but only 2,160 were under 60 years old.
While the state’s decision to direct nursing homes did make sure that those individuals had a place to go, it also may have put other residents at risk unnecessarily. The Associated Press reported that nursing home trade associations in the state reported no homes were forced to take patients and that no deaths or outbreaks were traced to the order.
That says more about how nursing homes — which are frequently called upon to handle infectious diseases like MRSA — managed the situation than it does about the state’s role. What is more alarming than that order is the state Health Department’s lack of oversight and enforcement on nursing homes that were directed to complete testing but dragged their feet.
Now that the Justice Department has said it won’t investigate, it should be up to the state to do so itself through either an internal process in the governor’s office or the Health Department or via an evaluation by the auditor general.
Because while nothing may have been wrong, that doesn’t mean that everything was done right.