(Snippets from the frontline)
COVID-19: Connecting the hospital / nursing home dots
The coronavirus is running rampant through senior residential facilities, especially nursing homes. One source: Hospitals.
Ten years ago as the conveyor belt of medicine geared up, profiteering hospitals learned to discharge patients as rapidly as possible. Some patients went home, but to expedite the transition, the path of least resistance was sending them to nursing homes.
To make them more palatable, nursing homes were rebranded as “Skilled Nursing Facilities”, and many further enhanced their name to “Post Acute Rehab.” Yet the care and reputation did not change.
Fast forward to our present crisis, and the glitch: Hospitals do not have to reveal whether medical staff have tested COVID-19 positive, and continually hide behind the guise of “confidentiality” and “HIPAA”, shunning voluntary self-reporting. (Legally true in California: Legislators, are you listening!?)
The existing hospital administrative attitude of “get ‘em in, and get ‘em out” could therefore have created a vicious cycle of discharged patients contaminating residents at nursing facilities.
Moms, dads, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, veterans, retired teachers and first responders have been some of those vulnerable victims.
The roots of this present problem lie in the past, but we must dig in the future to connect the dots.
Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.
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