Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP
Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare
The title of this blog is the title of the August 19, 2023 New York Times article with these opening paragraphs:
“The first terrifying wave of Covid-19 caused 60,000 deaths among residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities within five months. As the pandemic wore on, medical guidelines called for promptly administering newly approved antiviral treatments to infected patients at high risk of severe illness, hospitalization or death.
Why, then, did fewer than one in five nursing home residents with Covid receive antiviral treatment from May 2021 through December 2022?”
Then a few paragraphs in: “About 40 percent of the nation’s approximately 15,000 nursing homes reported no antiviral use at all.”
The NYT article speaks to vaccine mandates for employees accounting for 83% of employees being vaccinated by early 2022; 87% of residents were vaccinated. Vaccine booster is another area of concern with only 62% of residents and 26% of staff being up-to-date on Covid vaccinations.
Another cause for concern was the point-of-care testing, noting that “fewer than a fifth (of the nursing homes) had the recommended turnaround of less than 24 hours by fall 2020.”
Lockdowns “caused a lot of harm…a big lesson is that family visitors are essential”, noting that staff were usually bringing Covid into the facility during the lockdown.
Dr. David Gifford, Chief Medical Officer of AHCA “pointed to a variety of frustrating problems that prevented nursing homes from doing a better job during the pandemic, noting that the health care system as a whole sort of ignored (nursing homes).”
I encourage you to review this article and share it with your team.
How did your facility fare with these elements of the pandemic? What can you learn for the future from your experience with the pandemic? What would a post-mortem of your performance look like?
BriggsNetNews 