The state Health Department has revealed additional detail about coronavirus deaths in New York nursing homes, showing for the first time how many residents of each home died of COVID-19 outside of the facility, typically in a hospital.
The new disclosures represent a small fraction of what a court ordered the department to release under a Freedom of Information request by the Empire Center.
A report dated Feb. 4, posted on Saturday, shows a total of 13,163 nursing home residents have died during the pandemic, of which 4,067, or 31 percent, passed away outside the facilities.
The Cuomo administration had previously omitted hospital deaths from its reporting on nursing home data, a practice used by no other state.
On Jan. 28, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker revealed that 3,829 residents had died in hospitals as of Jan. 19. That acknowledgement came after a report on the pandemic in nursing homes from the office of Attorney General Letitia James faulted the Health Department for under-reporting the death toll.
Last week, a state Supreme Court justice ordered the department to fulfill a Freedom of Information request filed by the Empire Center seeking comprehensive data on nursing home deaths during the pandemic. The order gave the department five business days to comply, and it has not yet formally contacted the Empire Center.
The details released Saturday represent a tiny fraction of what the Empire Center requested. The department has now posted facility-level totals for a single day—Feb. 4—whereas the center requested facility-level numbers for each day of the pandemic.
The additional detail is necessary to assess the impact of specific events and policies, such the Health Department’s much-debated March 25 guidance memo—which for several weeks compelled nursing homes to admit patients who were coronavirus positive, and which many critics have blamed for contributing to the high death toll among residents.
Saturday’s report also took the form of a PDF file, which is difficult to use for statistical analysis. The Empire Center’s request specified that the data should be provided in spreadsheet format.
About the Author
You may also like
New York’s Home Health Workforce Jumps by Another 10 Percent
New York's home health employment is continuing to soar, growing by 57,000 jobs or 10 percent from 2023 to 2024, according to newly released data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Read More
Immigrant Enrollment in ‘Emergency Medicaid’ Surges to 480,000
One of the biggest drivers of New York's Medicaid enrollment growth over the past decade has been "emergency Medicaid" for undocumented immigrants, newly released state records show.
Read More
Upstate Insurance Customers Pay the Price for Medicare’s Hospital Rate Hike
A billion-dollar Medicare windfall for upstate hospitals has turned into a crisis for upstate health insurers that's threatening to disrupt coverage for millions of New Yorkers.
The Read More
New York’s Proposed ‘MCO Tax’ Would Generate a Fraction of What Lawmakers Expected
The Hochul administration's proposed "MCO tax" would generate far less than the $4 billion in extra federal aid anticipated by state lawmakers when they approved the concept this spring, according to documents obtained by t Read More
Cuomo’s House Testimony Added New Misinformation about Covid in Nursing Homes
Throughout the scandal over former Governor Andrew Cuomo's handling of Covid-19 in nursing homes, Cuomo and his administration repeatedly spread bad information – misstating how its policies had worked, understating death Read More
Hochul Hides the Specifics of a Looming Tax on Health Insurance
The Hochul administration has requested federal approval for a multibillion-dollar "MCO tax" on health plans without announcing the move or providing details to the public.
As by l Read More
New Yorkers’ Health Costs Spiral as Officials Take Credit for ‘Savings’
The latest round of health insurance premium hikes announced by New York regulators adds to evidence that state policies are drowning consumers instead of helping them.
Late last mo Read More
What Paul Francis Got Wrong About the Empire Center’s Nursing Home Research
In February 2021, the Empire Center published the first independent analysis of the Cuomo's administration much-debated directive ordering Covid-positive patients into nursing homes. The report found that the directive was associated with a statistically significant increase in resident deaths in the homes that admitted the infected patients. Read More