A former Pennsylvania
nurse who, in May, had been accused of killing two patients with doses
of insulin now faces more murder charges and has confessed to trying to
kill 19 additional people at several locations, authorities said
Thursday.
Heather Pressdee, 41, is accused of administering excessive amounts of
insulin to patients in her care, some of whom were diabetic and required
insulin, and some of whom were not, according to the Pennsylvania
Attorney General’s Office.
In total, 17 patients died who had been cared for by Pressdee.
Pressdee has admitted to trying to kill 19 other patients with insulin
at five different rehabilitation centers across the state as far back as
2020, and as recently as this year, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s
Office said.
"The allegations against Ms. Pressdee are disturbing. It is hard to
comprehend how a nurse, trusted to care for her patients, could choose
to deliberately and systematically harm them,” said Pennsylvania
Attorney General Michelle Henry. "The damage done to the victims and
their loved ones cannot be overstated. Every person in a medical or care
facility should feel safe and cared for, and my office will work
tirelessly to hold the defendant accountable for her crimes and protect
care-dependent Pennsylvanians from future harm."
Pressdee was now been charged with two counts of first-degree murder,
17 counts of attempted murder and 19 counts of neglect of a
care-dependent person.
"The alleged crimes happened while Pressdee was employed as a
registered nurse at the following facilities: Concordia at Rebecca
Residence; Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation (Guardian); Quality Life
Services Chicora; Premier Armstrong Rehabilitation and Nursing Center;
and Sunnyview Rehabilitation and Nursing Center," officials said.
"Pressdee typically administered the insulin during overnight shifts
when staffing was low and the emergencies would not prompt immediate
hospitalization."
The victims ranged in age from 43 to 104.
Pressdee was arraigned on Thursday and waived her preliminary hearing
on these charges. She currently remains in custody at Butler County
Prison without bail.
Anyone with information about these incidents or Heather Pressdee is
asked to contact the Office of Attorney General’s tipline at
888-538-8541.
By Brammhi Balarajan, Jillian Sykes, Caroll Alvarado and Holly Yan
A former nurse who killed at least three patients and tried
to kill more than a dozen more at nursing facilities across Pennsylvania
has been sentenced to life in prison, the state’s attorney general
said.
But the family of one of her victims said her real justice is yet to come.
Heather Pressdee pleaded guilty to three counts of
first-degree murder and 19 counts of criminal attempt to commit murder,
the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office said.
Pressdee, 41, pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, her attorney Phillip DiLucente told CNN Thursday.
As part of the plea agreement, a Butler County judge
sentenced Pressdee to three consecutive life sentences for the three
counts of murder “plus 380 to 760 years
of consecutive incarceration for the 19 counts of criminal attempt to
commit murder,” the attorney general’s office said. She will not be
eligible for parole.
“The defendant used her position of trust as a means to
poison patients who depended on her for care,” Attorney General Michelle
Henry said.
“This plea and life sentence will not bring back the lives
lost, but it will ensure Heather Pressdee never has another opportunity
to inflict further harm.”
‘She played God’
Pressdee intentionally gave lethal and potentially lethal doses of insulin to patients at five care facilities in Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler and Westmoreland counties between 2020 and 2023.
The daughter of victim Irene Simons said she’ll “never forgive” Pressdee for what she did.
“We’re angry and hurt that she disguised herself as a caring nurse,” Elizabeth Simons Ozella told CNN affiliate WTAE. “She took someone from this earth that she had no right to take, and she played God when she didn’t have that right.”
How the nurse tried to conceal her crimes
Pressdee admitted to “harming, with the intent to kill” the
19 patients, ages 43 to 104, the attorney general’s office said,
according to a criminal complaint filed against the former nurse.
She would often administer insulin during the low-staffed
night shift hours while working the medicine cart at the facilities, the
criminal complaint stated.
“Pressdee often took steps to ensure her victims would
expire prior to shift change so that they wouldn’t be sent to the
hospital where her scheme could be discovered through medical testing
such as C-peptide tests,” according to the criminal complaint.
Despite Pressdee’s hefty sentences this week, a sister of
victim Nicholas Cymbol said, “There’s no justice for this.”
“She’s pure evil,” Melinda Brown said, according to WTAE. “We’ll get justice when she meets her maker.”
A second lawsuit was filed Thursday against a Lower Burrell nursing
home over the death of a resident injected with a lethal dose of
insulin, one of numerous victims whom authorities said were targeted by a
rogue nurse during a yearslong killing spree.
The 15-count lawsuit against Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation
Center was filed in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court by Russell
Colwell III of West View.
Colwell was 92 when she died Dec. 28, 2021. For two years, her family thought she died from natural causes.
But, this fall, investigators with the state Attorney General’s
Office informed the family they were looking into her death as being the
result of a criminal act by Pressdee, who was arrested in May.
That news stunned Colwell’s survivors — her five grandchildren — who
believe her death could have been prevented had Belair followed more
stringent hiring practices and better monitored patients’ blood sugar
levels.
“All of that has really weighed on the family and is something
they’re still processing,” Brandon Keller, one of their attorneys, said
Thursday. “These were the people ultimately responsible for her care and
failed miserably.”
Julie Beckert, a spokeswoman for Belair, said the nursing home’s
parent company, Guardian, could not comment because it had not yet seen
the lawsuit.
Pressdee’s criminal defense lawyers said Thursday they had no comment
on a civil matter. They are busy trying to hammer out a plea deal with
prosecutors while Pressdee awaits trial.
Investigators said Pressdee was fired or forced to resign from a
dozen nursing homes and rehabilitation centers because of abusive
conduct toward residents or staff, including a half-dozen facilities
where she worked before Belair.
She is accused of killing or trying to kill at least 22 residents at
multiple facilities by injecting them with insulin, though in many cases
the alleged victims were not diabetic. The insulin caused severely low
blood sugar levels and death, authorities said.
Pressdee confessed to administering the insulin, according to investigators.
Colwell, one of eight children, lived in New Kensington, loved the beach and taught swimming at a YMCA. She was a congregant at The River Community Church in New Kensington. Her three children and husband died before her.
She had dementia when she was admitted to Belair in November 2021
after a fall. Pressdee had been hired earlier that year as an assistant
director of nursing despite what Colwell’s attorneys called an “alarming
history of resident abuse at prior facilities.”
Colwell’s lawyers pointed to that history as evidence of flawed hiring practices at Belair.
They also mentioned allegations of troubling behavior by Pressdee at
Belair and suspicions by co-workers that she was harming residents, all
previously documented by investigators. Guardian administrators were
aware of the rumors about Pressdee, but did nothing, the lawsuit claims.
Around that time, the state Department of Health inspected Belair and
found problems with the facility failing to notify doctors about
problems with residents’ high blood-sugar levels, leading to the death
of one person.
Inspectors found that Belair residents were in “immediate jeopardy.”
They even interviewed Pressdee, who admitted to not following protocols.
Despite that, the lawsuit claims, Belair “failed to further
investigate Pressdee after she admitted to the Health Department that
she did not comply with the resident’s care plan and facility policy.”
Two nights before Colwell’s death, medical records showed that she
was in a “pleasant” mood, the lawsuit said. The next day, Pressdee took
over Colwell’s care and spent “excessive amounts of time with her,”
according to the lawsuit.
On the day she died, Colwell took a rapid turn for the worse.
Pressdee took her vital signs — but did not measure her blood sugar, the
lawsuit said. At 11 a.m. on Dec. 28, 2021, an occupational therapist
tried to go into Colwell’s room, but the lawsuit claims that Pressdee
asked her to leave and later insisted that Colwell not be touched. She
died about two hours later.
Investigators said Pressdee admitted to giving insulin to a resident
identified only as M.C. All her alleged victims are listed only by
initials in the criminal complaints, but all other details about M.C.
match Mary Colwell.
Pressdee left Belair in February 2022. Colwell’s lawyers wrote that
she was terminated for abusive behavior toward residents and staff.
The lawsuit alleging wrongful death and corporate negligence was
filed just under the two-year statute of limitations. It was filed in
Allegheny County, where Guardian does business, lawyers said. Colwell is
seeking damages and a jury trial.
In October, attorney Robert Peirce sued Belair
in connection with the Sept. 28, 2021, death of Marianne Bower, a
68-year-old grandmother of seven, allegedly at Pressdee’s hands.
Investigators said Pressdee was responsible for at least five deaths at the facility.
In the Bower case, Pressdee sent a sympathy card and gift to the family after Bower’s death, according to the lawsuit.
Both complaints name as defendants Belair, its parent company Guardian, and numerous interrelated legal entities.
A former Pennsylvania
nurse who, in May, had been accused of killing two patients with doses
of insulin now faces more murder charges and has confessed to trying to
kill 19 additional people at several locations, authorities said
Thursday.
Heather Pressdee,
41, is accused of administering excessive amounts of insulin to patients
in her care, some of whom were diabetic and required insulin, and some
of whom were not, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s
Office.
In total, 17 patients died who had been cared for by Pressdee.
Pressdee has admitted to trying
to kill 19 other patients with insulin at five different rehabilitation
centers across the state as far back as 2020, and as recently as this
year, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office said.
"The
allegations against Ms. Pressdee are disturbing. It is hard to
comprehend how a nurse, trusted to care for her patients, could choose
to deliberately and systematically harm them,” said Pennsylvania
Attorney General Michelle Henry. "The damage done to the victims and
their loved ones cannot be overstated. Every person in a medical or care
facility should feel safe and cared for, and my office will work
tirelessly to hold the defendant accountable for her crimes and protect
care-dependent Pennsylvanians from future harm."
Heather
Pressdee, 41, is accused of administering excessive amounts of insulin
to patients in her care, some of whom were diabetic and required
insulin, and some of whom were not, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office.
Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office
Pressdee
was now been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, 17 counts
of attempted murder and 19 counts of neglect of a care-dependent person.
"The
alleged crimes happened while Pressdee was employed as a registered
nurse at the following facilities: Concordia at Rebecca Residence;
Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation (Guardian); Quality Life Services
Chicora; Premier Armstrong Rehabilitation and Nursing Center; and
Sunnyview Rehabilitation and Nursing Center," officials said. "Pressdee
typically administered the insulin during overnight shifts when staffing
was low and the emergencies would not prompt immediate
hospitalization."
The victims ranged in age from 43 to 104.
Pressdee
was arraigned on Thursday and waived her preliminary hearing on these
charges. She currently remains in custody at Butler County Prison
without bail.
Anyone with
information about these incidents or Heather Pressdee is asked to
contact the Office of Attorney General’s tipline at 888-538-8541.
(WJW) – Placing a loved one in a nursing home or assisted living
facility is one of the hardest decisions a family will ever have to
make. It’s being made even more difficult by a rash of recent incidents
involving elderly residents who have died in unusual situations while in
the care of local nursing home facilities.
FOX 8’s Carl Monday learns more about what’s behind the disturbing trend. Watch in the video above.
Family members of New York nursing home residents who say their relatives contracted coronavirus and died after Gov. Andrew Cuomo's March 25 directive held a memorial on Sunday with attendees including Fox News' Janice Dean.
Dean,
who attributes her in-laws' coronavirus deaths to Cuomo's
directive, said she and the other rally attendees had become like
family.
"I'm here today as a grieving family member, not someone who is
politically motivated, which our governor likes to call me," she said.
"We are bound togther because we want answers, and we will not stop."
Dean's in-laws, Mickey and Dee Newman, died in spring 2020.
Protesters against Gov. Andrew Cuomo's handling of nursing homes
COVID-19 deaths, gather outside Cobble Hill Health Center nursing home
on Sunday, March 21, 2021 in New York. (AP Photo/David Crary)
"We had no idea [Mickey Newman] had died of Covid until we saw the
death certificate," Dean said. "We had no idea there was a March 25
order for Covid-positive patients to nursing homes. My husband had to
deliver the news to his mother that his father was dead, and she was
heartbroken. Two weeks later she got Covid."
Family members constructed a "We Care Memorial Wall" with photos of their lost loved ones.
New
York City Councilmember Brad Lander and New York State Assemblyman Ron
Kim also attended the rally organized by Peter and Daniel Arbeeny, two
brothers who blame Cuomo for their father's death in 2020.
"There's 100,000 people like me and those around me who lost the ones they loved most," Daniel Arbeeny said.
Peter Arbeeny thanked nursing home staff and said he does not blame individual nursing homes or workers.
"As a Covid orphan, we need answers, we need an apology and we need a fair investigation," he said.
New York lawmakers are preparing an impeachment investigation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Kim was an early proponent of impeachment.
"When
I got that call from Cuomo threatening my career and my livelihood to
lie for him ... I was afraid he would escape accountabilty," Kim told
the crowd, adding that he lost his uncle to coronavirus in a nursing
home.
"His reign of abusive power will end soon because there are
way too many decent people in the city of New York to let this guy go
unchecked. ... We will find the truth," Kim said.
Attendees held signs with slogans including "Cuomo made our parents 'uncomfortable' #SeniorsToo" and "Apologize Andrew!"
Cuomo has faced criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for his
administration's March 25 directive that barred nursing homes and other
long-term care locations from turning away thousands of
coronavirus-infected seniors.
Despite Cuomo's efforts to attribute the controversy to partisan
politics, as questions swirling around his handling of the pandemic
continue, his administration was forced to admit that nursing home
deaths had topped 15,000 – nearly 10,000 more than was originally
reported by the state at the end of January.
NewsChannel 13 has confirmed the FBI and US Attorney’s Office in
Brooklyn have opened an investigation into the governor’s COVID-19 Task
Force and its handling of nursing homes during the pandemic, as first
reported by the Times Union.
Sen. Jim Tedisco is responding to the news. He released the following statement:
“This
was never about politics as some things, like the deaths of 15,000
nursing home residents, rise above politics. Given this federal
investigation into the Cuomo Administration, the legislature should
revoke the Governor’s emergency powers as there’s bi-partisan agreement
among Democrats and Republicans who believe we should restore the
legislature’s role as an equal branch of government. This must be the
top legislative priority when we reconvene on Monday afternoon as Cuomo
can no longer be trusted with his ‘Emperor-like’ powers.”
“Once we take Cuomo’s powers away, the legislature should send our
own subpoenas to the Administration to begin a state investigation of
the nursing home cover-up or pass my legislation with Assemblyman Ron
Kim for a bi-partisan, independent investigation of the nursing home
scandal.”
“If the facts demonstrate a cover-up and obstruction of justice, and
they certainly seem to with the drip, drip, drip of new information
revealed on a daily basis, then Governor Cuomo must resign or face
impeachment and removal from office.”
Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wrote a memoir
on pandemic leadership last year. But questions around New York’s
incomplete count of coronavirus-related deaths in nursing homes have
undercut his national image.
Now, the
Democratic leaders of the State Senate are in the final stages of
crafting a bill that would strip him of emergency powers granted during
the pandemic.
“I believe they should
be taken away, hopefully sooner than later,” State Senator Gustavo
Rivera said on Wednesday, adding that “we need to remind them that state
government is not one big branch: There’s three of them.”
Nearly
a year ago, Mr. Cuomo was granted far-reaching authority to supersede
state laws to combat the pandemic. He has signed dozens of executive
orders since then, mandating shutdowns and instituting quarantine
requirements for travelers, among other actions.
It remains unclear if the State Assembly
would follow the Senate’s lead, and any bill passed would also need to
be signed by the governor himself — though Democrats could override a
veto with supermajorities in both chambers.
The governor
also faces a federal inquiry by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney for the
Eastern District over his handling of nursing homes during the
pandemic.
The context
Critiques of the governor’s nursing home policies have been raised for months, and Mr. Cuomo had long dismissed them as partisan attacks. But on Wednesday, he lashed out at a critic from his own party, Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat who had said the governor had threatened him earlier.
After a report from the state attorney general
and a court order, the official count of deaths of nursing home
residents nearly doubled from about 8,500 to more than 15,000. Those who
died in hospitals had not been initially included.
Mr. Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, also privately told some lawmakers
last week that officials had withheld data because they worried about a
possible Trump Justice Department investigation, sparking further
allegations of a cover-up. The governor has since said that his
administration’s lack of transparency was “a mistake,” but has stopped short of a full apology.
“That
void of information caused the families who lost a loved one tremendous
pain,” he said on Wednesday. “My administration created the void — and
that I feel bad about. Not illegal, not unethical. But just failed
people in that moment.”
The state attorney general, Letitia James, said it’s likely that the
Cuomo administration failed to report thousands of Covid-19 deaths of
nursing home residents.
After
the attorney general’s report was released, state health officials
raised the number of Covid-19-related deaths connected to nursing homes
by more than 3,800.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
ALBANY, N.Y. —
For most of the past year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has tried to brush away a
persistent criticism that undermined his national image as the man who
led New York through the pandemic: that his policies had allowed
thousands of nursing home residents to die of the virus.
But
Mr. Cuomo was dealt a blow when the New York State attorney general,
Letitia James, reported on Thursday morning that Mr. Cuomo’s
administration had undercounted coronavirus-related deaths of state
nursing home residents by the thousands.
Just
hours later, Ms. James was proved correct, as Health Department
officials made public new data that added more than 3,800 deaths to
their tally, representing nursing home residents who had died in
hospitals and had not previously been counted by the state as nursing
home deaths.
The state’s
acknowledgment increased the overall death toll related to those
facilities by more than 40 percent. Ms. James’s report had suggested
that the state’s previous tally could be off by as much as 50 percent.
The findings do not change the overall number of Covid-19 deaths in New York — more than 42,000,
the most of any state — but the recalculation in the number of nursing
home deaths illustrates how unprepared the nursing home industry was in
the first and deadliest weeks of the pandemic.
Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, had
long dismissed the critiques of his policies governing those facilities
as partisan attacks from the Trump administration and other Republican
adversaries.
But the report by Ms.
James, a fellow Democrat, casts a renewed light on the state’s decision
to send nursing home residents who had been hospitalized with the
coronavirus back to the nursing homes, a policy that Mr. Cuomo has
defended as following federal guidelines.
At
the same time, Ms. James’s assertion of an undercount of deaths gave
credence to theories that the state may have intentionally played down
the number of those deaths to avoid blame.
“This
is shocking and unconscionable,” said Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried,
the Democratic chairman of the Assembly Health Committee. “But not
surprising.”
The 76-page report, which included
critiques of other policies promulgated by the Department of Health and
of the behavior of nursing home operators, led to a scramble by Mr.
Cuomo’s administration to rebut its assertions, including a lengthy
response late Thursday afternoon from the health commissioner, Dr.
Howard Zucker.
Dr. Zucker said that
the state website had always been clear that deaths it listed did “not
include deaths outside of a facility.”
“The word ‘undercount’ implies there are more total fatalities than have been reported,” he said. “This is factually wrong.”
He
also asserted that the lack of data on hospital deaths of nursing home
residents was due to concern and caution about the accuracy of data that
nursing homes supplied — an issue also raised by the attorney general.
“D.O.H. does not disagree that the number of people transferred from a
nursing home to a hospital is an important data point,” he said.
The new data released by Dr. Zucker puts the total number of deaths connected to nursing homes at 12,743.
Ms.
James’s findings would seem to put her in rare conflict with Mr. Cuomo;
she was the governor’s preferred candidate after Eric T. Schneiderman
suddenly resigned as attorney general in 2018, and she readily embraced
Mr. Cuomo’s political backing.
Her
report seemed certain to inspire more questions about the handling,
oversight and performance of the state’s nursing homes in the early
stages of the pandemic. Indeed, on Thursday, Mr. Cuomo’s critics in
Washington and Albany had already seized on the attorney general’s
report as evidence of his dishonesty, amid calls for Dr. Zucker to
resign.
“This is now more than a nursing home scandal,” said Representative
Elise Stefanik, a conservative Republican from upstate New York. “This
is a massive corruption and cover-up scandal.”
Deaths in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have accounted for about a third of the nation’s some 430,000 Covid-19 deaths. Federal and state authorities have made vaccinating staff and residents at such facilities a top priority, though that effort has been slower than hoped.
But even as state officials in New York tackle vaccine shortages, the count of deaths in the state’s nursing homes remained a source of controversy.
Mr. Cuomo had been accused of obscuring a more accurate estimate of
nursing home deaths, because the state’s count only included the number
of deaths at the facilities, rather than accounting for the residents
who died at a hospital after being transferred there.
For its report,
Ms. James’s office surveyed dozens of homes and found consistent
discrepancies between deaths reported to the attorney general’s
investigators and those reported to and officially released by the
Health Department.
In one instance, an
unnamed facility reported to the Health Department that it had 11
confirmed and presumed deaths on site through early August. The attorney
general’s survey of that same facility, however, found 40 deaths,
including 27 at the home and 13 in hospitals.
Another
facility reported one confirmed and six presumed Covid-19 deaths to the
Health Department, according to the report. The attorney general’s
office, however, said the facility reported to its investigators that
there were more than four times that number — 31 dead — by mid-April.
The attorney general’s report also scrutinized immunity provisions granted to health care providers
codified by Mr. Cuomo in the state budget. The report said the
protection of immunity may have prompted some nursing homes to make
financially motivated decisions at the height of the pandemic, like
admitting patients even when the facilities were facing staff shortages
or were unequipped to care for them.
Indeed, Ms.
James’s office is still investigating and weighing legal action stemming
from complaints made to her office about shortcomings and neglect that
may have placed residents at risk. Those include allegations of nursing
homes that failed to isolate Covid-19 patients, maintain stockpiles of
personal protective equipment, properly screen employees for the virus
or ensure adequate staffing levels even before the pandemic.
The
report also cast a critical eye on perhaps the governor’s most
criticized decision since the beginning of the pandemic last year: a March 25 directive from the Health Department that ordered nursing homes to accept and readmit patients who had tested positive.
The Health Department responded in July with a report
that sought to absolve the state from any blame resulting from the
March directive. The report concluded that most of the patients sent
back to nursing homes “were no longer contagious when admitted and
therefore were not a source of infection.” The Health Department
concluded that the virus was instead spread by employees who did not know they were contagious.
While
acknowledging that Mr. Cuomo’s memo to nursing homes was consistent
with federal guidance, the attorney general’s report said the governor’s
policy “may have put residents at increased risk of harm in some
facilities.” Under the policy, some nursing homes stopped testing
residents for the coronavirus, a factor that might have obscured data
reported by the facilities, the report found.
For
its part, the Health Department also cited Ms. James’s findings on the
March 25 memo, saying the report had found no evidence that the policy
outlined in the directive “resulted in additional fatalities in nursing
homes.”
Ms. James’s report also found a
number of homes that “failed to comply with critical infection-control
policies,” including failing to isolate residents who had tested
positive for the virus or screen employees for it.
The state’s reporting of nursing homes deaths has been the focus of a lawsuit
by a conservative economic think tank, the Empire Center for Public
Policy, which has sued, seeking to force the Health Department to
release more complete data.
Last year, the Democratic-controlled
Legislature held hearings partly in an attempt to pry the data from the
administration, to no avail.
Dr.
Zucker was supposed to testify next week during a state budget hearing,
where lawmakers were expected to press him on nursing home deaths, but
his appearance was recently pushed back to late February.
The Democratic chairman of the investigations and government operations committee in the State Senate, James Skoufis, who has accused the Health Department of stonewalling investigators, suggested on Thursday that he would use a subpoena to compel the release of data from Dr. Zucker’s office.
“The
D.O.H. commissioner’s unresponsiveness to the Legislature’s many
questions and concerns is insulting and unacceptable,” the senator said
in a statement.
The attorney general
asked 62 nursing homes — about a tenth of the state’s total — for
information about on-site and in-hospital deaths related to the virus;
investigators then cross-referenced that information with public reports
of deaths issued by the Health Department. The deaths reported to the
attorney general’s office at most of those facilities totaled 1,914,
compared to the state’s much lower count of 1,229.
Ms.
James said that her office was investigating those circumstances “where
the discrepancies cannot reasonably be accounted for by error or the
difference in the question posed.”
The
attorney general said she was continuing to conduct investigations of
more than 20 nursing homes across the state that “presented particular
concern,” noting that “other law enforcement agencies also have ongoing
investigations relating to nursing homes.”
Under
normal circumstances, the attorney general’s office “would issue a
report with findings and recommendations after its investigations and
enforcement activities are completed,” Ms. James said in her report.
“However, circumstances are far from normal.”
by MARINA VILLENEUVE, BERNARD CONDON and MATT SEDENSKY
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration
confirmed Thursday that thousands more nursing home residents died of
COVID-19 than the state's official tallies had previously acknowledged,
dealing a potential blow to his image as a pandemic hero.
The
surprise development, after months of the state refusing to divulge its
true numbers, showed that at least 12,743 long-term care residents died
of the virus as of Jan. 19, far greater than the official tally of 8,505
on that day, cementing New York's toll as one of the highest in the
nation.
Those numbers are consistent with a report released just
hours earlier by Attorney General Letitia James charging that the
nursing home death count could be off by about 50%, largely because New
York is one of the only states to count just those who died on facility
grounds, not those who later died in the hospital.
“While we
cannot bring back the individuals we lost to this crisis, this report
seeks to offer transparency that the public deserves,” James said in a
statement.
The 76-page report from a fellow Democratic official
undercut Cuomo's frequent argument that the criticism of his handling of
the virus in nursing homes was part of a political “blame game," and it
was a vindication for thousands of families who believed their loved
ones were being omitted from counts to advance the governor's image as a
pandemic hero.
“It’s important to me that my mom was counted,”
said Vivian Zayas, whose 78-year-old mother died in April after
contracting COVID-19 at a nursing home in West Islip, New York.
“Families like mine knew these numbers were not correct.”
Cuomo’s
office referred all questions to the state health department. Several
hours after the report, State Department of Health Commissioner Howard
Zucker released a lengthy statement attempting to refute James' report
but which essentially confirmed its central finding.
Zucker's
figure of 12,743 nursing home resident deaths included for the first
time 3,829 confirmed COVID-19 fatalities of those residents who had been
transported to hospitals.
Those figures could be even higher, but
the health department said its audit was ongoing, didn't break out
deaths presumed but not confirmed to be caused by the virus, and omitted
those in assisted living or other types of long-term care facilities.
Zucker,
however, still took issue with James' characterization of his
department's official tally as an “undercount.” He said “DOH was always
clear that the data on its website pertains to in-facility fatalities."
James
has for months been examining discrepancies between the number of
deaths being reported by the state's Department of Health, and the
number of deaths reported by the homes themselves.
Her
investigators looked at a sample of 62 of the state’s roughly 600
nursing homes. They reported 1,914 deaths of residents from COVID-19,
while the state Department of Health logged only 1,229 deaths at those
same facilities.
Thursday's release backed up the findings of an Associated Press investigation last year that concluded that the state could be understating deaths by as much as 65%.
State
Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat who has blasted the Cuomo
administration for its incomplete death count, said he was “sadly
unsurprised” by the report.
“Families who lost loved ones deserve
honest answers,” Rivera said. “For their sake, I hope that this report
will help us unveil the truth and put policies in place to prevent such
tragedies in the future.”
Cuomo, who last fall released a book
touting his leadership in dealing with the virus, has not been shy about
using New York's lower nursing home death count to make the argument
that his state is doing better than others in caring for those in such
facilities.
“There's also no doubt that we’re in this
hyper-political environment so everybody wants to point fingers,” Cuomo
told CBS “This Morning” in October. “New York, actually, we’re number 46
out of 50 in terms of percentage of deaths in nursing homes ... it’s
not a predominantly New York problem.”
The attorney general’s
report also took aim at New York's controversial March 25 policy that
sought to create more space in hospitals by releasing recovering
COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, which critics contended was a
driving factor in causing nursing home outbreaks.
James’ report
said those admissions “may have contributed to increased risk of nursing
home resident infection and subsequent fatalities,” noting that at
least 4,000 nursing home residents with COVID-19 died after that
guidance. But James’ report said the issue would require further study
to conclusively prove such a link.
New York’s health department
released a much-criticized report last summer that claimed the March 25
policy, which was reversed in May, was “not a significant factor” in
deaths.
James’ review also found that a lack of infection controls
at nursing homes put residents at increased risk of harm, that homes
with lower federal scores for staffing had higher fatality rates, and
that a broad measure Cuomo signed in April shielding nursing homes and
other health care providers from lawsuits may have actually encouraged
homes to hold back on hiring and training.
“As the pandemic and
our investigations continue," she wrote, “it is imperative that we
understand why the residents of nursing homes in New York unnecessarily
suffered at such an alarming rate.”
TRENTON — Nine bills that would affect long-term care facilities in New Jersey, which are connected to half of the confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the state, were approved Thursday by the Senate or Assembly, including four now on Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk.
They include a state emergency operations center, raises for certified nursing assistants and staffing requirements and a task force to consider future changes. The bills derived from an investigation the Murphy administration commissioned that was done by Manatt Health.
State Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, said the legislation is needed to ensure long-term care facilities are better prepared for outbreaks – an upgrade that officials thought they had directed through laws put in place after a 2018 viral outbreak at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation.
“Clearly somewhere along the line, there is failure. And I believe that needlessly, more people died than needed to during this pandemic,” Vitale said.
Vitale said clearly some nursing home residents would have died due to COVID-19 regardless – but that the toll in nursing homes now exceeding 7,070 clearly deserves a response.
“The amount that passed in our long-term care facilities and nursing homes and in our veterans’ homes in my view is unacceptable. And there ought to be accountability,” he said.
State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio, R-Morris, said the Legislature should further investigate why so many died from coronavirus in New Jersey nursing homes and that the U.S. Department of Justice is now asking similar questions.
“Moments of silence is great, but we can honor those that died by having a special select committee with subpoena powers,” Pennacchio said.
Democrats blocked a vote on his attempt to force the Senate to take up such a bill.
Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle, D-Bergen, said New Jersey was the coronavirus epicenter in the United States in the spring and that long-term care facilities bore the brunt.
“COVID-19 truly has exposed the gaping holes in our state’s long-term care infrastructure, and this legislation is a critical component in filling in those cracks.”
Most of the bills advanced with widespread support. The biggest exception was one paying certified nursing assistants $3 more an hour, which Assemblyman Brian Bergen, R-Morris, said will lead to a shortage of home health aides.
It also requires facilities to spend 90% of their funds on direct patient care.
“The experts have said it’s mathematically impossible to do it,” Bergen said. “So not only is it not possible, ladies and gentlemen, but it’s not right. This is a government overreach into private business.”
Only
about one-third of the package of bills made it to Murphy Thursday.
Another third passed the Senate but not the Assembly, and the other
third is still stuck in committees.
The following bills were approved and sent to Murphy:
S2758/A4482:
Establish minimum wage requirements for certain long-term care facility
staff, establish a direct care ratio requirement for nursing homes and
require DHS to conduct a nursing home care rate study.
S2787/A4481:
Establish New Jersey Task Force on Long-Term Care Quality and Safety,
which would develop recommendations to drive improvements in
person-centered care, resident and staff safety, quality of care and
services, workforce engagement and sustainability and any other
appropriate aspects of the long-term system of care in New Jersey.
S2790/A4476:
Establish certain requirements concerning the state’s preparedness and
response to infectious disease outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics
affecting long-term care facilities. The bill would establish the
Long-Term Care Emergency Operations Center in the Department of Health,
which would serve as the centralized command for long-term care facility
response efforts and communications during declared public health
emergencies.
S2813/A4547: Establish a temporary
rate adjustment for nursing facilities to support wage increases and to
cover costs related to COVID-19 preparedness. The bill would make a
one-time appropriation of $62.3 million from the General Fund to the
Department of Human Services for the purpose of implementing the bill.
The Senate also passed the following bills:
S537:Establish
certain minimum and maximum temperatures in emergency shelters, rooming
and boarding houses, and certain nursing homes and residential health
care facilities.
S2785: Require long-term care
facilities to adopt and implement written policies, provide for the
practical availability of technology to facility residents and ensure
that appropriate staff and other capabilities are in place, to prevent
the social isolation of facility residents.
S2786: Allow per diem health care workers working within long-term care facilities to accrue paid sick leave.
S2788: Provide supplemental payments to long-term care facility staff providing direct care services during COVID-19 pandemic.
S2798: Establish uniform requirements on the submission of outbreak response plans to DOH by long-term care facilities.
Janice Dean speaks out speaks out on New York's nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic.
Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean, who recently lost her elderly in-laws to COVID-19,
finally got to testify before New York State lawmakers on nursing home
deaths on Monday after she was denied the opportunity the week before.
Dean told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is not providing the exact numbers of those who died from COVID-19 in adult care facilities because “New York state does not count the numbers that we lost in hospitals from nursing homes.”
“We
need those numbers to move forward and help change the laws,” Dean
said. “We need an independent bipartisan investigation that
involves subpoena power so we can get the health commissioner on the
hot seat and ask questions and get truthful answers.”
Last week, Dean found out that she was taken off the list to testify at a hearing geared toward understanding why and how the pandemic took root in New York nursing homes.
She said New York State Sen. Thomas O'Mara, a Republican, had admitted to her "that they [the Senate Majority] were uncomfortable having [her] as a witness," so they took her off the list. Speaking on the “Brian Kilmeade Show” last week, Dean said she believed Cuomo or his administration were behind the decision.
In
a statement sent to Fox News last week, Rich Azzopardi, senior adviser
to Gov. Cuomo, said that the legislature is “a separate branch of
government and they run their hearings how they see fit."
On Monday, New York Senate Republicans held a forum where Dean’s voice was heard.
“My
family's story is not based on politics as some might have you
believe,” Dean said during her testimony on Monday. “And apparently my
appearance here today makes some people uncomfortable, but I don't think
it's me they’re uncomfortable with, it's the cover-up and the
truth that happened in New York nursing homes.”
Dean said her father-in-law, who was in a nursing home and
rehabilitation center, died the same day she and her husband found out
he was sick and that they didn’t know he had contracted the novel
coronavirus until they saw his death certificate.
Dean also said
that her husband’s mother contracted COVID-19 in her assisted living
facility. She was transported to the hospital and died in the hospital.
Dean’s mother-in-law died on April 14, about two weeks after her
father-in-law passed away from the novel coronavirus.
Dean joins
many New Yorkers whose loved ones have died at nursing homes amid the
pandemic. They have been calling for an independent investigation into
whether nursing homes kept coronavirus patients separated, had enough
employees, tracked workers who worked at multiple health care facilities
and provided staffers with adequate protective gear.
New York state lawmakers grilled State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker earlier this month about the steep, though ultimately unknown, death toll at nursing homes in the state amid the pandemic.
Members
of the Democratic-led legislature have been holding hearings geared at
understanding why and how the pandemic took root in New York nursing
homes after the state Department of Health reported nearly 6,600 residents, who had or likely had COVID-19, died at nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
The state hasn’t disclosed how many nursing home residents died at hospitals or how many have been infected with COVID-19.
During the hearing, Zucker defended the administration’s response and
declined to provide key data points sought by Democrats and
Republicans, including a rough estimate of how many nursing home
residents have died in hospitals because of the novel coronavirus.
Zucker cited worry that those numbers could include double-counts of
deaths.
“We don't know the full numbers,” Dean said on
Tuesday. “Cuomo and his health commissioner have been asked time and
time again to give us the actual total deaths that happened, not only in
nursing homes, but from seniors that were transported to hospitals
and died in hospitals even though they got COVID-19 in their respective
elder care facilities.”
Cuomo has received scathing criticism for
his early order requiring that nursing homes accept COVID-19 patients
who had been released from hospitals, effectively placing them in the
same facilities housing the demographic most vulnerable to the virus.
Cuomo has insisted
that New York’s original nursing home policy was in line with a March
13 directive from the Trump administration’s Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) that went out to all states on how to control nursing
homes.
New York, among other states, said at the time that nursing
homes cannot refuse to take patients from hospitals solely because they
have the coronavirus. After mounting criticism that the policy put the
most vulnerable people at risk and contributed to a high number of
fatalities, New York reversed course on May 10. Now hospitals can only
send patients who have tested negative for COVID-19 to nursing homes.
Cuomo
and his administration have been tight-lipped about the extent of
deaths and infections at the state’s more than 600 nursing homes since
March and Cuomo declined to admit any missteps.
Dean said Cuomo
“hasn't answered the question about his mandate [on] March 25th that
went for 46 days straight to bring COVID-positive patients into nursing
homes.”
“He’s dodged the question, he’s blamed everybody else except the
person that signed the mandate, Gov. Andrew Cuomo,” she continued.
Cuomo’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
Dean said she will be traveling to Albany, N.Y. on Wednesday to meet
with New York Sen. James Tedisco, a Republican, and Majority Democratic Assembly Member Ron Kim, who lost an uncle in a New York nursing home to
COVID-19, to request a bipartisan investigation.
The group, which
includes other legislators from both sides of the political aisle, will
call for the passage of legislation for an independent, bipartisan
state commission to “fully investigate the deaths of thousands of New
Yorkers who died from COVID-19 in state-regulated nursing homes,”
according to a news release.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Scott Morrow visits his mother, Claudette Stasik, at the Bria of Geneva
nursing home in the western suburbs of Chicago. Since mid-April, 75 of
the nursing home’s 91 residents and 37 of its 120 workers have tested
positive for the coronavirus.
(Anjali Pinto for ProPublica)
Within three weeks, the Bria of Geneva nursing home went from one case
of COVID-19 to two dozen residents dead and at least 75 infected.
Delayed testing and gaps in nursing home data obscures the true toll of
the crisis.
by Jodi S. Cohen and Haru Coryne
ProPublica Illinois is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to get weekly updates about our work.
Standing
outside a window at the Bria of Geneva nursing home one morning last
week, 2-year-old Rosa Morrow tried to get her grandmother’s attention.
She held her palm to the screen. She blew kisses. She counted slowly, “1
… 2 … 3 …”
On
the other side, 71-year-old Claudette Stasik, who has tested positive
for COVID-19, sat in her reclining wheelchair, her eyes closed and her
arms crossed against her chest, her gray hair braided to one side. A
nurse, wearing gloves, gently rubbed her hand.
“Can you say hi? Wake up, honey. You have visitors.”
Separated
by the glass — and by a devastating outbreak of the coronavirus at this
facility in the western suburbs of Chicago — Stasik’s son Scott and his
family can only attempt to communicate with her through a FaceTime
call.
“Hi, Mom. We’re over here. Can you look over this way?” her son said. Stasik opened her eyes, but only for a moment.
It’s
been a brutal few weeks at Bria of Geneva, which has experienced one of
the largest and deadliest outbreaks of the coronavirus in the state,
according to a ProPublica Illinois analysis of Illinois Department of
Public Health data.
Since
mid-April, 75 of the nursing home’s 91 residents and 37 of its 120
workers have tested positive for the virus. Twenty-four residents have
died from COVID-19, the most recent on Monday, according to Bria of
Geneva and the coroner’s office in Kane County, where the facility is
located.
While
other Illinois nursing homes may have seen larger overall numbers of
cases and deaths, almost none have experienced an outbreak on the scale
of the one here, with more than two-thirds of the residents infected
with the virus and one-fourth killed by it. The situation at Bria of
Geneva illustrates the price of insufficient and delayed testing and how
a lag in public reporting of cases and deaths in nursing homes obscured
the breadth of a crisis that has disproportionately hit the state’s
vulnerable elderly population.
The
first resident at Bria of Geneva tested positive April 17. At the time,
Illinois public health officials had instructed nursing homes that they
did not need to test everyone when there were positive cases. That
guidance changed soon after, when state officials acknowledged that more
testing was needed in nursing homes to identify asymptomatic residents
and staff members and prevent large outbreaks. Still, it took another
week for Bria to obtain enough supplies to do widespread testing.
State public health officials first released coronavirus case data on nursing homes
April 19. It showed no cases at Bria of Geneva, even though the
outbreak was underway. In some of the Public Health Department’s weekly
updates since, the number of deaths has been undercounted or becomes
outdated almost as soon as it’s released, according to a comparison of
state data with a tally from the Kane County coroner’s office.
Some
family members have blamed Bria officials for being unprepared for the
virus and for failing to communicate with them about their family
members. The county coroner, who has been performing posthumous COVID-19
tests, also has expressed frustration with the handling of the
outbreak.
“I
don’t feel that it should be my responsibility at this point running
around testing [dead] people that should have already been tested,”
Coroner Rob Russell said.
Philip
Branshaw, the medical director at Bria of Geneva, said that the last
few weeks have been “trying” and “heartbreaking” for the medical staff,
family members and residents, but that he is confident that patients are
well cared for. As of this week, 43 residents and staff members have
either recovered from the virus or are asymptomatic, according to the
nursing home.
“I
likened it to following all the rules, and when you get ready to cross
the street and look at the lights and you step out and get run over by a
truck,” Branshaw said.
At
least 1,500 residents of Illinois nursing homes or other long-term care
facilities have died from the virus — roughly half of all COVID-19
deaths in the state, although residents of such facilities make up less
than 1% of Illinois’ population. The crisis is most apparent outside
Cook County. In these areas, long-term care centers account for
two-thirds of all deaths, according to a ProPublica Illinois analysis of
data from the state Department of Public Health.
Across
the state, more than 400 out of about 1,700 facilities have reported at
least one positive case among residents and staff, and about 20
facilities have had 100 or more positive cases.
The
75 cases among residents at Bria of Geneva, located about an hour west
of Chicago, include Claudette Stasik, who has Parkinson’s disease and
dementia, her family said. Although she hasn’t displayed a high fever,
cough or other symptoms of the virus, her health has declined in recent
weeks as she has been confined to her room.
Patricia
Yanni, 78, had lived at Bria of Geneva for eight years. “The doctor
called me and said, ‘I’m not sure she will make it out of this,’” said
her daughter, Kristin Davison. Yanni died several days later, on May 1.
Susan
Borowiak knew her mother, Lucille James, had been tested for the virus,
but nobody from the nursing home told her the results, she said. James
died May 1, hours before Yanni. The death certificate listed the cause
of death as COVID-19 and noted she was last seen alive in the late hours
of April 30. “The hardest part is knowing there was nobody there with
her,” Borowiak said.
“Somehow the virus got in there and went like wildfire,” Borowiak said. “You scratch your head over the whole thing.”
A Dire Situation
Left: Patricia Yanni
had lived at Bria of Geneva for eight years. She died May 1. (Courtesy
of the Yanni family); Right: Lucille James was tested for the virus but
her daughter says no one from the nursing home informed her of the
results. James died May 1, hours before Yanni. (Courtesy of the James
family)
When
Branshaw discusses the timeline of the outbreak at Bria of Geneva, he
starts with the morning of April 17. That’s when the first resident,
sent to Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva a day earlier,
tested positive for the virus.
“We
did not have any testing available to us, which unfortunately is pretty
common,” Branshaw said. “Once we got our first patient, it was a
landslide.”
Three
more Bria of Geneva residents were admitted to Delnor that day. Others
have been admitted since. Some of the first residents to test positive
were transferred to a facility in Palos Hills that Bria of Geneva’s
parent company, BRIA Health Services, operates. At the time, staff
members thought they could contain the virus by transferring them to a
coronavirus-designated wing at the Palos home.
“We were still trying to figure out the scope of the issue,” Branshaw said.
He
was hamstrung, he said, because he couldn’t get testing supplies. At
the direction of the Kane County Health Department, Bria of Geneva
eventually obtained 10 tests from a state lab, the amount supplied to
facilities at the time, county health officials said. Branshaw secured
an additional 60 tests after asking, in a group chat with medical
professionals, if anyone could help; top health officials from
Northwestern’s Central DuPage and Delnor hospitals supplied them.
On
April 23 and 24, Branshaw and a nurse practitioner went from room to
room at the nursing home. “We swabbed everyone we could,” he said.
Russell,
the coroner, said he was frustrated by the difficulty nursing homes had
in obtaining tests. “The biggest disappointment to me is why aren’t
long-term facilities testing folks? There are things they could do to
mitigate the spread,” he said last month, as the outbreak was just
beginning. He tested some nursing home residents after they died, both
to provide answers to family members and to build a more accurate public
accounting of the disease.
Only
four nursing homes in Illinois had more deaths than Bria of Geneva when
the state updated its count last Friday. All of them are larger
facilities, with more beds and a higher average number of residents.
Meadowbrook Manor of Bolingbrook has had at least 26 deaths, the most in
the state, but it has three times the capacity of Bria of Geneva.
Symphony of Joliet, with twice the capacity of Bria of Geneva, has had
24 deaths.
Pat
Comstock, the COVID-19 response director for the Health Care Council of
Illinois, an industry group that represents about 300 nursing homes,
criticized state public health officials for not providing nursing homes
with personal protective equipment early enough. Hospitals obtained
gear directly from the state, but nursing homes initially had to go
through county health departments or secure it on their own, she said.
“Not
prioritizing nursing homes early enough created some challenges across
the board,” she said. “At the beginning, even if facilities went out and
tried to find their own test kits, the supply just wasn’t available.
Help was needed from the state.”
Gov.
J.B. Pritzker has said that the state provided protective gear to all
county health departments and made clear that the long-term care
facilities are “priority recipients” for distribution. Kane County
health officials provided masks, gloves, gowns and other gear to Bria of
Geneva, a spokeswoman said.
On
April 20, state officials said they would send teams to nursing homes
to test residents and staff — including at facilities with no confirmed
cases to try to isolate cases and avoid major outbreaks. It’s unclear
how many sites they’ve visited, and the Illinois Department of Public
Health did not respond to a request for that number.
“We
are working to test all residents and all staff at those homes,”
Pritzker said in April, adding that the state would prioritize homes
serving minority populations. State officials also said staff members
should be tested more regularly instead of relying on “wellness checks”
that don’t detect asymptomatic carriers.
In
response to questions from ProPublica Illinois, an Illinois Department
of Public Health spokeswoman said the agency has sent 30,396 test kits
to 129 long-term care facilities and Quest Diagnostics, a private
company, has sent at least an additional 2,653 test kits to eight
facilities.
“This
effort continues daily,” IDPH spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said. “Early
in the pandemic when testing capacity and PPE were limited, and
asymptomatic transmission was thought not to occur, isolating residents
and restricting staff could be done with symptoms alone.”
Arnold
said the state releases data on nursing home cases and deaths only once
a week because public health officials are currently “stretched” and
their focus is on responding to outbreaks to limit the spread and
protect residents and workers.
“Without
widespread testing and without frequent release of the data, there are
undoubtedly buildings across the state that have outbreaks that we don’t
even know about or don’t know as much about as others,” Comstock said.
Troubling Reports
At
the front door of Bria of Geneva, it’s as if time stopped before the
coronavirus arrived. A sign at the front door still reads: “Visiting
hours are only a suggestion. Visitors are welcome any time.”
But
no visitors have been allowed inside since mid-March. Messages in the
windows signal the fight that’s going on inside: “#WeGotThis.”
“#BriaStrong.” “#AllforOne.” “GenevaProud.”
BRIA
Health Services operates nine facilities in Illinois, all in the
Chicago area and near St. Louis. Five of them have had deaths from
COVID-19.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which inspects and regulates nursing homes, gives Bria of Geneva
an overall rating of four stars, which is above average, and its top
rating, five stars, for the care of long-term residents. But in its most recent health inspection report,
in July 2019, the federal agency cited the facility for having
insufficient staff to meet residents’ needs and for some workers not
using proper hygiene, among other concerns, and gave it just two stars
in that report.
The
report described residents waiting so long for workers to respond to
them that they soiled their clothes or were essentially confined to
their rooms. “We just don’t have enough staff,” one resident told
inspectors last year, according to the report. “I have waited up to 2
hours to get my call light answered.”
Inspectors
also watched a nursing assistant change a resident’s soiled underwear
without changing her gloves. The same worker, 45 minutes later, changed
another resident’s soiled underwear and then, still wearing the same
pair of contaminated gloves, transferred him back to his wheelchair,
wiped his face with a wet washcloth and combed his hair.
“Staff
should wash their hands and change their gloves after caring for
residents to prevent the spread of infection,” the report states.
Inspectors concluded residents did not face immediate harm but there was
potential for it. Bria of Geneva was not fined.
Some
family members whose relatives died from the virus told ProPublica
Illinois they were left in the dark as COVID-19 spread through the home.
Kristin
Davison’s mother returned to Bria of Geneva after being treated at a
hospital for COVID-19 symptoms around April 25. Davison said she spent
hours repeatedly calling the nursing home to get updates, but nobody
answered the phone. She FaceTimed with her mother on Wednesday, April
29. The next day, she couldn’t reach anyone at the facility.
“They
either didn’t pick it up, I was hung up on, I was transferred. It took
forever for someone to call me and most people would not return your
calls,” Davison said. “I had to hound them. It was ridiculous. You
shouldn’t have to do that.”
Bria of Geneva
(Anjali Pinto for ProPublica)
On
Friday evening, May 1, she got a phone call that her mother had died.
“The director said, ‘We did our rounds and when we came around she was
gone,’” Davison said. She called the nursing station to ask what had
happened and why she wasn’t contacted. She said a nurse replied: “We are
very busy here. I didn’t know she was going to pass, so I didn’t know
to contact you.”
“What
hurts me the most is my mother was alone,” Davison said. “I would have
loved to have been able to FaceTime her one more time to say goodbye,
and I didn’t have that option.”
Susan
Borowiak said she’s also concerned about the care that her mother,
Lucille James, received in the weeks before she died. When Borowiak last
saw her mother through a window, she “looked really rough,” she said.
Her hair was long and unkempt. Food was stuck on her shirt.
“The
nurses we did know there, we liked. They were very caring. Once the
staff all got sick, it was a rolling boil there,” she said. “I don’t
think they were as prepared as they should have been and didn’t have the
proper protective equipment.”
She
also expressed frustration at not getting updates about her mother’s
declining health after learning through a mass email from Bria of Geneva
on April 24 that residents and staff had tested positive. The next
evening, she emailed the nursing home with a plea for an update on her
mother’s health, saying she had been trying to reach someone there for
two days. “I understand it’s insane there. I’ll even take a text or
email,” she wrote. “Thank you for being there and taking care of my
mom.”
Administrators
allowed Borowiak’s sister, Donna James, to visit her mother the night
before she died, and she held her hand for the last time. As she walked
into the home, James said, a resident was wheeled out on a stretcher and
into an ambulance. The nursing home workers did not have face shields
or medical-grade masks as they went from room to room, James said.
Lucille
James died on her husband’s birthday. They had been married for 59
years. Borowiak, who had said goodbye to her mother on FaceTime, went to
Bria of Geneva one last time and watched as the funeral home arrived to
pick up her mother’s body, draped in purple velvet, her favorite color.
When
Stasik’s family visited last week, the nurse by her bedside wore a face
shield, gown, mask and gloves. But during visits before that and since,
the family said, workers didn’t wear gloves and one nurse assistant
wore his mask below his mouth.
“He was touching her and everything,” said Stasik’s daughter-in-law, Maria. “No wonder it is spreading so fast.”
Rosa Morrow blows kisses at her grandmother, who has tested positive for COVID-19.
(Anjali Pinto for ProPublica)
Branshaw
said that Bria of Geneva has been “more than adequately staffed” by
nurses working longer shifts or through pulling in employees from other
BRIA homes. He said the nursing staff has been “heroic” and that it has
had sufficient protective gear.
Bria
of Geneva resident Debbie Jacobs, who tested positive for the virus but
is asymptomatic, has lost many of her friends in the past few weeks.
She learns the disease has taken another life when the nursing home
plays the hymn “How Great Thou Art” over the intercom to mark each
death.
She
said the outbreak was “like a bomb went off.” Two days after residents
met with the Bria of Geneva administrator to discuss preemptive lockdown
procedures, the first resident tested positive, Jacobs said. “Nobody
expected it,” she said. She said workers have been supportive during the
crisis and have kept residents informed through flyers and one-on-one
meetings.
“I have never met a [nursing home] administrator that cares so much for her building,” Jacobs said.
Other
families, including whose loved ones died, have sent letters, emails
and food to thank the nurses and other workers for their courage to keep
coming to work. Community members provided lunch from Panera Bread Co.
and the Geneva library staff sent a letter of thanks.
Difficult Visits
During
the 90 minutes that Stasik’s family visited her last week, at least two
other residents had windowside visits from their families.
Mary
Niceley dropped off homemade fudge and pumpkin-date bread for her
95-year-old mother, who has also tested positive for the virus but is
doing well, she said.
“I
love you mom,” Nicely said, during a brief windowside visit. She cried
as she walked away, waving her hands in front of her eyes to try to stop
the tears.
Noel
Corral saw his 89-year-old father, Alfredo, who had tested positive for
COVID-19 a week earlier and was moved to a room on the first floor so
his family could visit. Corral tapped on the window and told his father
he wasn’t alone. He told him not to worry anymore.
“Every
day he is getting weaker and weaker,” Corral said, choking up. His
father died the day after that visit. Nursing home workers escorted
Alfredo’s body outside when the funeral home came to pick him up. “The
staff did everything possible to make us feel like we were there with
our dad,” he said.
Alfredo Corral’s wife, Tina, 81, visited her husband last week to say goodbye. They were married for 62 years.
(Courtesy of the Corral family)
During
last week’s visit, Stasik’s son shared small talk and asked questions
he knew his mother, who can no longer speak or feed herself, would not
answer. “I haven’t seen you in a few days? Anything new and exciting?”
“You have to eat a little more, OK?” Morrow said. “It will make you feel better.”
Stasik
occasionally opened her eyes. Once, she wiggled her fingers, as if she
were waving. “Grandma’s ’wake!” shouted her 2-year-old granddaughter.
The end of the visits are always the hardest. “We all love you,” Morrow said through the window.
As he drove off in his minivan, he had the same thought he has every time. “Will she be OK the next time I see her?”
