Tag: nursing homes

NY Health Department sued for ‘hiding’ COVID-19 death stats of nursing home patients

The state Health Department is illegally withholding information about the number of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 in hospitals so it can intentionally undercount fatalities and tout New York’s response to the pandemic, a new lawsuit charges.

The Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany-based think tank, filed a Freedom of Information Law request for the data on Aug. 3 and was later told that it couldn’t have the records until Nov. 5, the court papers filed Friday allege.

The explanation given was that “a diligent search for responsive documents is still being conducted,” according to the Empire Center’s suit filed in Albany state Supreme Court.

But daily tallies of all nursing home residents who’ve died from the coronavirus, “both within nursing home facilities and elsewhere,” are contained in the state’s Health Emergency Response Data System, or HERDS, according to the suit.

The Empire Center says there’s “no reason” why the Health Department “hasn’t already disclosed the information” and accuses officials of “hiding it without justification.”

The Empire Center also alleges that the state’s official count of at least 6,600 COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes “omits potentially thousands of nursing home residents who died in hospitals after being transferred from their nursing homes.”

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New York’s true nursing home death toll cloaked in secrecy

Riverdale Nursing Home in the Bronx appears, on paper, to have escaped the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, with an official state count of just four deaths in its 146-bed facility.

The truth, according to the home, is far worse: 21 dead, most transported to hospitals before they succumbed.

“It was a cascading effect,” administrator Emil Fuzayov recalled. “One after the other.”

New York’s coronavirus death toll in nursing homes, already among the highest in the nation, could actually be a significant undercount. Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there.

That statistic could add thousands to the state’s official care home death toll of just over 6,600. But so far the administration of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has refused to divulge the number, leading to speculation the state is manipulating the figures to make it appear it is doing better than other states and to make a tragic situation less dire.

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