Nursing home patients infected with COVID19 are dropping like flies in the state of Michigan. Much like the millions of babies whose lives are snuffed out at Planned Parenthood, Democrat Governor Whitmer doesn’t appear to overly concerned, as there are no current plans to change the way patients infected with COVID19 are being dropped off at nursing home facilities, where the state is paying approved facilities $5,000 per COVID positive patient.
“They incentivized bringing COVID patients into nursing homes,” State Rep. Peter Lucido (R) has said. “They sweetened the deal.”
We reported about this tragic situation in late May.
Click on Detroit claims nursing homes are being paid about $5,000 per patient that they take who test positive for COVID19.
On April 15, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed Executive Order 2020-50. The order requires nursing homes to care for any current residents who test positive for COVID-19 but aren’t sick enough to require hospitalization, in a dedicated area of the facility.
According to Record-Eagle– MediLodge GTC, a nursing home in Traverse City, MI, agreed to act as a regional hub for the transfer of as many as 26 patients recovering from COVID-19.
Administrators at Medilodge, which operates two facilities, were contacted by local health officials to inquire whether the facility was accepting COVID-19 positive patient transfers from Detroit.
“We as a health department have serious concerns about the fact that people from outside the area could be brought in and would take some of the resources here,” Health Officer Wendy Hirschenberger said in a phone interview Friday. “Specifically, PPE.”
On Friday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed a bill from the GOP-controlled Legislature that would have shifted elderly people with COVID-19 away from nursing homes and into entirely separate facilities.
The Detroit News reports – The bill was a direct challenge to the Whitmer administration’s current handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has focused on caring for those with the virus in isolated spaces of existing homes.
In a letter explaining her veto, the Democratic governor said the bill, sponsored by Sen. Peter Lucido, R-Shelby Township, was based on “the false premise that isolation units created within existing facilities are somehow insufficient to protect seniors.”
“Instead of protecting seniors, this bill would require the state to create COVID-19-only facilities, forcing hospitals and many nursing homes to send COVID-19-positive patients to such facilities without any requirement for consent, doctor approval or notification to the patient or their family,” Whitmer added. “The legislation fails to explain how such facilities would be staffed or paid for, or how frail residents would be protected during the potentially traumatic transfer from one facility to another.”
The governor’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes has been a target of Republican criticism.
About 33% of the state’s deaths linked to the virus have been nursing home residents or employees, according to state data.
Every state with coronavirus nursing home guidelines like those of the Whitmer administration has since shifted to a policy similar to what Republicans proposed, Lucido said Friday.
Earlier this month, a Detroit News review of inspection reports for the 45 nursing homes with the most deaths linked to COVID-19 found that nearly half had been cited in the last four months for failing to follow infection control, isolation or staffing policies.
In April, Whitmer’s administration created regional hubs — 21 nursing homes that are supposed to have the equipment and capacity to care for those with COVID-19 in separate areas from residents without the virus. The hubs can receive stable COVID-19 patients being discharged from hospitals and residents from other facilities not capable of properly caring for them.
But critics, such as Lucido, have argued that the policy has spurred the spread of COVID-19 within vulnerable populations as some nursing homes have struggled to isolate infected residents inside their buildings. Lucido has referenced the Whitmer administration’s paying regional hubs $5,000 per bed in the program and $200 per day for occupied beds.
In Wayne County, a where the majority of residents are African-American, the number of patients dying from COVID-19 in nursing homes is stunning.
From the Michigan.gov website:
