At the Life Care Centers skill nursing facility in Kirkland Washington two thirds of the residents and staff were infected with the Coronavirus and 37 people connected to the facility have died. In Brooklyn, the Cobble Hill skilled nursing facility had 55 Covid-19 deaths and was stacking up bodies in a makeshift morgue. In my own State of Maryland, just released statistics show nursing homes accounting for about half of all Covid-19 deaths statewide.
The drumbeat of news about widespread infection of patients and staff at senior housing and care facilities (mostly skilled nursing facilities) and large numbers of Covid-19 deaths is damaging the reputation of the entire seniors housing and care industry. While it seems clear that patients in skilled nursing facilities, who are self-selected to be frail, usually more than 80 years and who often have multiple pre-existing conditions have been hard hit by the Coronavirus and Covid-19, it is far from clear to me that the seniors housing and care industry as a whole has performed as badly as the news reports would indicate.
Most articles on Coronavirus and Covid-19 deaths in long term care lump all seniors housing and care facilities together including: skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, independent living communities and continuing care retirement communities that combine two or more levels of care within a single community. Even though each of these facilities serves residents with overlapping but often very different, age, income and health profiles, press reports dramatize conditions at a relatively small number of skilled nursing facilities and generalize the skilled nursing to all types of seniors housing and care.
To do a fair comparison of how the seniors housing and care industry has performed during the Coronavirus pandemic, a number of variables need to be considered.
First, you need an accurate baseline of Coronavirus infections and deaths in the community. Because of insufficient testing it is likely impossible to get accurate Coronavirus infection rates for the community at large. It has also been widely reported that the number of community-wide Coronavirus deaths has been undercounted because the overall number of deaths in the community in 2020 has been much higher than the increased number of Coronavirus linked-deaths reported. Early deaths were not attributed to the pandemic, many early victims were misdiagnosed and were never tested for Coronavirus and little retesting of corpses has been done. Even today, many of those dying at home and even some of those dying in hospitals may not be tested and deaths may be attributed to other conditions complicated by the virus. However, Coronavirus may not account for the entire increase in death rates in 2020, as some physicians believe patients with other emergency conditions, such as heart attack and stroke, may be avoiding hospital care in an attempt to avoid the virus and, as a result, deaths from some other conditions may be up as well.
So the first step is to calculate the overall increase in deaths on a statewide or metropolitan in 2020 for the period from January 1 2020 through the most recent date for which deaths are available with the average number of deaths say over the last three years. Then to refine these numbers by looking at trends for major diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes and developing a reasonable community-wide estimate of Coronavirus/Covid-19 deaths. Ideally death statistics would be available by age and race since both are believed to increase the risk of dying from Covid-19.
The second step in a fair analysis of the performance of seniors housing and care facilities during the Coronavirus pandemic would be to control for the age, race and health status of those in facilities and in the community. Provisional death counts for the Coronavirus (Covid-19) and pneumonia and influenza reported by the CDC for the period from February 1, 2020 through April 25, 2020 show that 56% of all deaths were among those 75 years of age and above. Deaths of residents in seniors housing and care facilities contributed to these totals but were seniors in these facilities simply more at risk because of their age or did senior housing and care facilities have higher overall rates of infection and death than similarly aged seniors in the community? It has also been reported that people of color have died at higher rates from Covid-19 and whites. Ideally, we would also compare both the racial composition of seniors housing and care facility residents with those dying community-wide in order to understands if the racial composition of seniors housing and care facility resident can explain potentially higher death rates.
Finally, why did some seniors housing and care facilities perform better than others. Seasonal flu and other contagious conditions are a risk at all seniors housing and care facilities and typically result in higher death rates during the winter months when flu is most common. Senior housing and care facilities, particularly skill nursing facilities, have well-established protocols for infection control that often include segregating sick patients, shutting down new admissions, limiting visitors, use of protective equipment and enhanced cleaning regimens. Did some facilities implement infection control measures sooner than others and was implementation of infection control measures delayed because of asymptomatic staff, visitors and patients and the inability to get patients and staff tested? What role did government regulations such as mandatory social isolation play, if any, in infection and death levels in seniors housing and care facilities?
As part of this final stage of analysis, it is important for the industry to evaluate how seniors housing and care facilities of various types performed. Did skilled nursing facilities housing the oldest and most frail seniors have higher infection and death rates? Did access to testing and protective equipment make a difference? Did continuing care retirement communities, which typically have younger, more affluent, better educated senior population perform better than other types of communities and better than living in the community.
I believe it is important for the seniors housing and care industry to undertake the study outlined above in order to provide a more accurate assessment of how residents of seniors housing and care facilities faired from the Coronavirus pandemic. This should be done to provide seniors and their families with an objective basis upon which to select seniors housing and care choices. It can also provide operators, property owners and investors with useful information on how to limit future risks from a Corona virus return.
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