When emergency use authorizations (EUA) were granted to two COVID-19 vaccines in December 2020, health care workers and residents in long-term care facilities were granted first priority for the shots — and a federal partnership to vaccinate nursing homes kicked into gear. By January 25, most nursing homes participating in the Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term […]
Officials in New York last November began working to launch a handful of nursing homes designated for COVID-19 patients only — after a firestorm of criticism for a directive in the spring of 2020 that sent COVID-19 patients to any nursing home at all. The Manhattan campus of the New Jewish Home in became one […]
The vaccination efforts against COVID-19 that began in late December have begun to bear fruit in the form of steep declines of new COVID-19 cases and deaths among nursing home residents, one of the largest nursing home trade groups reported Tuesday. And with new cases dropping by 82% among nursing home residents — who have […]
The day-to-day operations of running a skilled nursing facility, were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic — along with the core business model of post-acute and long-term care in America. For many operators, the pandemic has exposed the flaws and systemic challenges of the space, both on the regulatory and operating sides. And as cases continue […]
Two of the largest trade associations for nursing homes announced a goal of vaccinating approximately 75% of the roughly 1.5 million nursing home workers across the U.S. by the end of June. The American Health Care Association (AHCA), which represents more than 14,000 primarily for-profit nursing homes and long-term care facilities, and LeadingAge, which represents […]
Embroiled in an ongoing scandal about the state’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced reform legislation that would require full disclosure of facility ownership and place caps on both profits and executive pay. “Facilities have put profits over care for far too long and as we look forward, we […]
COVID-19 outbreaks in skilled nursing facilities are affected by more than geography, and nursing home operators have tools and actions they can take to mitigate the spread of the virus in their facilities, the Center for Medicare Advocacy (CMA) argued in a report released on Thursday. “Since the start of the pandemic, one of the […]
The push to vaccinate nursing home residents and staff that has unfolded across the U.S. over the course of late December and January appears to be having some effect, at least in the number of COVID-19 cases among residents. From January 3 to January 31, COVID-19 cases among nursing home residents went from 26,860 to […]
Long-term acute care (LTAC) hospitals proved themselves a critical part of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic while also gaining a share of the patients discharged to facility-based care by short-term acute hospitals — even as the share of those patients going to the skilled nursing setting declined. A new report, published February […]
Good infection control standards are the same for skilled nursing facilities across the U.S. — both in the sense of federally mandated requirements, and in the sense of the concrete conditions that are necessary to prevent the spread of contamination. This was true even before a pandemic that shook the world in 2020, with ongoing […]
The COVID-19 vaccines being distributed in skilled nursing and long-term care facilities constitute a light at the end of the tunnel, at least in terms of the clinical ravages inflicted in SNFs and other institutional settings. But it’s far from clear what effect that will have on the number of patients and residents in those […]
A new study on COVID-19 among nursing home residents and staff found that the cases decreased at a faster rate among both groups after the first vaccine clinic took place in facilities, suggesting that transmission could decline in three weeks after receiving the first vaccine dose. “Vaccinated nursing homes experienced a 48% decline in new […]
As skilled nursing facilities roll up their sleeves at varying rates for the vaccine against COVID-19, their clinical situation amid the pandemic is improving rapidly, a turnaround from 2020 made almost fully complete with the distribution of vaccines. But the financial outlook, shaped by dismal occupancy numbers that show no signs of recovery, is becoming […]
When the effort to vaccinate long-term care workers and residents began to gather momentum, hesitancy among workers became a prominent issue well before the first shots were administered. The issue of whether or not workers — burned out by the ongoing tragedy of resident and staff deaths from COVID-19, personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, and […]
While skilled nursing facilities and their pharmacy partners work to vaccinate staff and residents against COVID-19, they can’t lose track of the testing that is critical to revealing who might be infected — particularly as positivity rates across the U.S. remain high. According to county positivity data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services […]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week stopped reporting the number of COVID-19 doses distributed to the agency’s pharmacy partners as part of the Federal Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program as vaccinations expand to other settings. But it has expanded information on some metrics surrounding the efforts to inoculate residents on […]
A Phase 3 clinical trial of an antibody drug that enrolled residents and staff at skilled nursing and assisted living facilities found that the treatment significantly reduced the risk of contracting symptomatic COVID-19. The antibody drug, bamlanivimab (LY-CoV555), was developed by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) for clinical use with the Vancouver-based […]
Alex Azar, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), turned in his resignation to President Trump on last week in keeping with the customary resignations of political appointees prior to the inauguration of a new U.S. president. The resignation came two days ahead of the resignation of Centers for Medicare & […]
For one skilled nursing operator, its ethos of maintaining a strong local footprint has paid off unexpectedly in the form of facilitating COVID-19 vaccination among its frontline staff. But that facilitation wouldn’t have been possible without a focus on documenting the concerns of its workers and taking the steps to address them individually. Carespring Health […]
Several states reported the highest average weekly number of new COVID-19 cases in long-term care facilities in November or December, Kaiser Family Foundation reported, and several reported the highest average weekly number of new COVID-19 deaths in such facilities in December. The KFF issue brief, published January 14 by Priya Chidambaram and Rachel Garfield, used […]