House lawmakers promise investigation into Pennsylvania nursing home deaths
(The Center Square) – Pennsylvania House Republicans said Monday they will investigate the impact of a controversial policy that advised senior living facilities to accept residents back after their COVID-19 hospitalizations ended.
“We believe Pennsylvanians deserve better from their government when they are seeking answers as to why something so tragic has occurred and they are not getting answers,” said Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Bellefonte. “Unfortunately, as of today, including our recent budget hearings where members directly asked the administration about this issue, Pennsylvanians and their families are left only with excuses and deflection from an administration that has been anything but transparent.”
Benninghoff said the House Government Oversight Committee will launch the probe into how many residents died as a result of the policy. About half of the state’s 24,000 COVID-19 fatalities occurred among seniors, and Pennsylvania ranks eighth nationwide for most nursing home deaths.
“We’ve been looking for answers for our citizens for almost a year now,” said Rep. Natalie Mihalek, R-Pittsburgh. “The Wolf administration claims transparency is their No. 1 priority, yet provide us with no clarity behind their decisions. Our citizens deserve better.”
Lawmakers want to know why – given the virus’s propensity for infecting the elderly – the Department of Health recommended that facilities readmit residents recovering from the virus, potentially worsening the outbreak.
“I in no way expect perfection, but I do expect transparency,” said Rep. Clint Owlett, R-Wellsboro. “We knew from day one that the most dangerous place was going to be in our nursing homes and senior living facilities.”
Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam said last week that the policy was crafted based on a recommendation from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a way to ease the burden on the health care system. Besides, she said, allowing virus patients to recover at home was a top priority and congregate facilities are where many seniors live.
“We need to know what went wrong,” Mihalek said. “We were unsatisfied with the answers we were given. Even absent of those conversations, this was a long time coming.”
Benninghoff said he will refer the investigation to the bipartisan committee when the House returns to session March 15. The committee, comprised of five Republicans and four Democrats, will then take over the inquiry.
“The problem has been, no one will step up and do the investigation here in Pennsylvania. So, if no one else will do it for these families, we will,” Owlett said. “So many never got to say goodbye. We cannot bring these lives back. We cannot fix the wrong that was done. But we can learn from this and make sure it never happens again. I look forward to finally getting the answers we all deserve.”
Former Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said last year the policy was rarely used. She said the virus was “unwittingly” transmitted by “brave, but unfortunately asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic staff.”
“Our actions allowed hospitals to reserve beds for the most severely ill patients and to discharge those who are less severely ill to skilled nursing facilities,” she said, paraphrasing a directive from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). “Those are the guidelines we received from CMS and so we implemented those guidelines.”
Levine left the post to join President Joe Biden’s administration in January.
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