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.
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.
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.
As the Empire Center’s senior fellow for health policy, Bill Hammond tracks fast-moving developments in New York’s massive health care industry, with a focus on how decisions made in Albany and Washington affect the well-being of patients, providers, taxpayers and the state’s economy.
A politically connected medical group in the Bronx garnered an unusual benefit in the new state budget – access to money previously reserved for financially troubled safety-net hospitals and nursing homes. Read More
(This post has been updated to correct errors.)
Albany's newly enacted budget appears to increase the state share of Medicaid spending by $4.2 billion or 13 percent, contin Read More
The state Health Department has belatedly published a more complete COVID death count for the pandemic's first year, accounting for more than 6,000 victims who were left out of the state's previous tallies because they died Read More
As New York's health-care industry agitates for more money from the state budget, two of its most influential lobbying groups are airing TV ads that make alarmist and inaccurate claims about Medicaid. Read More
Two years ago last week, I wrote in the Daily News about how then-Governor Andrew Cuomo was pushing a costly change to insurance law on behalf of a hospital group that had supported his campaign through a fund-rai Read More
Friday's announcement of an amended labor contract for New York City-area hospitals and nursing homes sends a contradictory message about the financial condition of the state's health-care industry.
Read More
The accumulated surplus of the state-run Essential Plan had ballooned to $9.9 billion as of the end of December, putting it on track to break $10 billion by the close of the fiscal year on March 31, according to newly obtained records from the comptroller's office. Read More
In a move that ought to raise eyebrows in Washington, the Hochul administration is requesting additional federal money for New York's Essential Plan, which is already sitting on more than $9 billion after years of running a multi-billion-dollar surplus.
Read More