WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has announced new guidelines requiring nursing homes nationwide to report to patients, their families, and the federal government when they have cases of coronavirus.

“Nursing homes are sort of that ground zero,” said Seema Verna, the administrator for the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services in an interview with Spectrum News.

Verna is overseeing the new rules requiring nursing homes to tell patients and their families of a COVID-19 diagnosis within 12 hours. The facilities will also report directly to the Centers for Disease Control about hospital admissions and deaths.

“We want to make sure that patients and families have the information they need, they need to know what’s going on inside the nursing home,” Verna said.

So, why has it taken the administration this long to require nursing homes to disclose this information to the CDC?

 

 

"This is really building on the reporting that is already in place. Nursing homes should be doing this. They should be telling families if there is a change in patient status, any changes in their healthcare, that should be happening already,” Verna explained.

"We feel like the enhanced reporting will give better tools to consumers and people who are not necessarily in the nursing home,” she added.

"It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not really a meaningful step in the right direction,” said Richard Mollot, who leads the Long Term Care Community Coalition.

“We are seeing horrific situations in nursing homes across the country and to say we are going to start developing a form, this should have been out a month ago,” Mollot added.

Mollot said he’d like to see the federal government step up additional regulations and dispatch members of the National Guard to assist nursing home staff.

“The federal government really should be taking the lead on this. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, they have regional offices all around the country. They should be getting involved, getting those boots on the ground,” Mollot said.

"Now especially that staffing is so strained, it’s important that the feds should be doing this, coming in there. The feds should require that every nursing home report its staffing every day. Right now, we have no idea. We don’t know if there are nurses in there. Everybody is locked out. We also have to get back to enforcing minimum standards,” he added.

Carol Herman, president of the Foundation Aiding the Elderly welcomes the new regulations but says they are long overdue.

“The more knowledge we have, the more powerful we become. Then, we can make proper decisions about what we are going to do,” Herman said in an interview with Spectrum News.

"This is a big wake up call,” she said.

Verna says the agency plans to make the data they collect publicly available online, although she could not say when exactly that portal would be up and running.