Posted on 05/11/2020 9:16:12 AM PDT by lightman
A state senator from Franklin County has called for the immediate resignation of Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine, saying her actions were a major factor in the large number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the state’s nursing homes.
Sen. Doug Mastriano, a first-term Republican representing Franklin, Adams and a part of York counties, said Levine has committed the equivalent of policy malpractice in her handling of the coronavirus pandemic, specifically in her handling of the virus’s spread through nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
Mastriano specifically targeted Levine for a policy which called for nursing home and long-term care patients who had been hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19 to be returned to their homes when they were ready for release from hospitals. Mastriano said that contributed to major outbreaks in numerous nursing homes around the state.
“Our secretary of health, Dr. Levine, decided that it would be good to allow COVID-positive patients to be returned to elder-care facitlies. And as a result of that, it broke out like fire,” Mastriano said during a rally with constituents at the base of the Capitol steps Monday.
"The very same people our secretary of health said were going to be vulnerable... It unleashed heck upon our dearly beloved fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles. I think that’s unconscionable, unacceptable, and that secretary needs to be held accountable for that awful decision,” Mastriano said.
The senator also blasted Levine for what he called the department’s poor response to the outbreaks in homes once it had become apparent they were one of the epicenters of the problem in Pennsylvania.
To date, state figures show that nursing homes residents have accounted for 2,529 of the state’s 3,707 reported COVID-19 deaths. That is a pattern that has been echoed in most states across the country, however.
In a policy guidance issued in March, the Health Department stated, in part:
"Nursing care facilities must continue to accept new admissions and receive readmissions for current residents who have been discharged from the hospital who are stable to alleviate the increasing burden in the acute care settings. This may include stable patients who have had the COVID-19 virus."
Health Department Press Sectretary Nate Wardle said there were valid reasons for that policy, and challenged Mastriano’s interpretation of the data.
In most cases, Wardle said, individuals being readmitted to a long-term care facility from the hospital with COVID-19 would be those who would have had COVID-19 before they were sent to the hospital,. In these cases, the readmitted resident would not be introducing it to the facility, if they already had COVID-19 and needed more acute care at the hospital.
There were other cases, Wardle noted, in which persons with COVID-19 needed continuing care, but no longer hospital care, and was placed in a a long-term care facility that had bed space to ease capacity in the hospitals.
It was not immediately clear how often that happened, or if it was a direct cause of some of the worst outbreaks at long-term care facilities in the state.
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Here’s a commentary going around in PA newspapers online. The author *spit* throws shade on Trump, Pence, Laura Ingraham, Republicans...and whines “Going mask-free is the new ‘don’t tread on me.’ If more people die on the altar of others’ selfishness, well, I guess that’s the price of freedom.”
He can be found at his website and/or email below his commentary at the link, should anyone care to waste e-breath on him.
Yes, but he pretends to be a woman.
About time someone did.
The rest of the PA GOP needs to stand up with this Senator and back him up.
Ewwwww! Makes me think of Tiny Tim.
Makes me think of a bianco Pizza the Hutt.
WRONG!
HIS actions were a major factor in the large number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the state’s nursing homes
You keep using that word, “she”. I do not think it means what you think it means.
“In these cases, the readmitted resident would not be introducing it to the facility, if they already had COVID-19 and needed more acute care at the hospital.”
It’s fascinating finally to see a defense of the practice.
By their logic, quarantines would be utterly pointless, since the neighborhood/city/state/nation that infected people came from has “already been introduced” to the virus.
But then, why did these very same policy makers impose lock-downs? It’s making my head hurt.
Yikes what the hell is it? Is it even human?
Hope you’re right!
It was born one.
Richard (Dick) never liked his first name...
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