Credit New Hampshire Veterans Home
COVID-19 vaccines have arrived at New Hampshire s long-term care facilities and are beginning to roll out, after some concern about minimal communication and scheduling issues.
Long-term care facilities are getting their vaccines through a federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens. Nursing homes in New Hampshire have been particularly hard hit, with 79 percent of the state s deaths occurring at long term care facilities, the highest rate in the country.
The New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton, an active outbreak location which has recently seen declining active cases and 36 total deaths, said it would start inoculating people Wednesday.
One statistic from the COVID-19 pandemic makes New Hampshire stand out from all other states â the percentage of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
Eighty percent of New Hampshireâs COVID-19 deaths â four of every five â have involved residents of long-term care facilities, according to state and federal data.
That percentage is twice the national average.
In state-by-state color-coded maps that portray nursing home deaths, New Hampshire is a pronounced turquoise, surrounded by dark blue New England states with rates at least 20 percentage points lower.
âWorking in an environment like this, the COVID virus is always on peopleâs minds,â said Marlene Makowski, administrator at St. Joseph Residence nursing home in Manchester.
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My Turn: Action, not studies, needed for long-term care
Published: 12/23/2020 6:20:25 AM
In 2016, Senate Bill 439 created a commission to study the worker shortage in long-term care. In November 2016, among other things, the commission recommended, “Medicaid reimbursement should be sufficient to pay the Medicaid share-of-cost of living wages that will assist in recruiting, and retaining, caregivers in both the facility-based and in-home care long-term care settings.”
Concurrently, then-Gov. Maggie Hassan had, by executive order, created a similar commission. In December 2016 that commission reported that “New Hampshire faces a serious challenge in meeting its citizens’ long-term care needs in both community and facility-based settings.” It noted that, “Medicaid reimbursement has been stagnant for many years, thereby suppressing wage growth.” Accordingly, it recommended that the state “raise Medicaid reimbursement rates to support wages that reflect the current and
Health care experts urge New Hampshire to be more like Vermont with COVID-19 prevention
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., on March 6, 2014. (Valley News - Will Parson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Will Parson
Published: 12/21/2020 5:55:13 PM
Several Upper Valley health care providers and researchers are calling on New Hampshire to take more aggressive action to curb transmission of COVID-19 to prevent illness, death and overcrowding at hospitals.
While some said they recognize the challenge of balancing what may seem like competing needs of the economy and public health, they argued that targeted restrictions – including several enacted in neighboring Vermont – are needed. Moreover, some said, preventing an uncontrolled surge will benefit the economy in the long run.