For Murphy and Cuomo, questions persist over decision to readmit nursing home residents. Here’s what happened.
Updated Mar 22, 2021;
Posted Mar 14, 2021
N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy (l.) and N.Y. Andrew Cuomo face questions on their handling of the crisis in the nursing homes of their respective states. New York s attorney general has been particularly critical.Ed Murray and NY Governor s Office
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The conversation was tense.
New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli began the March 31 conference call with hundreds of long-term care facility operators explaining they were expected to allow nursing home patients recovering from COVID-19 to return from the hospital.
More horrors revealed at one of NY’s worst nursing homes. Is it time to shut it down?
Updated Mar 12, 2021;
Posted Mar 11, 2021
The late Donald Moe Hunt in his room at Pontiac Nursing Home. His family claims in a lawsuit the nursing home s negligence led to his death.Provided photo
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Oswego, N.Y. – Larry Silverman, a Cicero dentist whose career was cut short by a stroke, spent some of his final days on earth being mocked and abused by employees of Pontiac Nursing Home.
A nurse aide had a coworker take a cellphone photo of her lying in bed with Silverman with her arm around his waist. Another employee ordered Silverman, who suffered from severe dementia, to swear while making a video of him.
arrow Families of COVID-19 victims who passed away in New York nursing homes demand Governor Andrew Cuomo apologize for his response to clusters in nursing home during pandemic. October 2020. Yuki Iwamura/AP/Shutterstock
Vulnerable nursing home residents are being moved between facilities with little notice to families or elected officials, prompting concerns about the Cuomo administration s new strategy to create COVID-only establishments. While state officials say the policy is needed to keep hospital beds open for acute-care patients, critics told Gothamist/WNYC the lack of transparency fits a pattern, one that prioritizes nursing homes over patients and their families.
Advocates and elected officials pointed out that several facilities taking in COVID-positive patients discharged from hospitals have poor ratings, including one nursing home that has spent more than five years on a federal watch list for some of the worst nursing homes in the country.
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Without administration officials there taking questions, having dismissed the inquiry as a partisan exercise, there were no new answers.
Rima Samman says that closing in on a year later, family members still need answers from the state and nursing homes as to why COVID-positive people were readmitted from hospitals back to long-term care facilities, as well as the care that was – or was not – provided at the height of the pandemic last spring.
“We treat animals better than the way my brother was treated those last 48 hours,” Samman said.
Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long-Term Care Community Coalition, said the March 31, 2020, directive about readmitting residents is rightfully criticized but didn’t force nursing homes to take back sick residents if they didn’t have a way to keep them separate.
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