EDITORIAL: State must resolve nursing home complaints as publicly as laws allow

Jul. 26--It is understandable that, in the midst of a pandemic, the New York State Health Department would find itself bogged down under a backlog of complaints. But now that the caseloads have significantly subsided, officials should take this opportunity to resolve numerous issues.

Nearly 5,000 complaints are pending against nursing homes. State Health Department officials cite privacy laws in explaining why the agency refuses to release further information on those complaints. Even without violating privacy laws, officials could offer data on the kinds of cases or the nursing homes under review.

Covid-19 killed more than 6,300 nursing home residents in New York, and so the Health Department understandably gave top priority to investigating complaints of infection control and immediate jeopardy. Action on other complaints was postponed.

Among the complaints awaiting resolution is one involving Leona Post, who died May 1 at age 83. Her daughters have said that their mother did not receive enough assistance in eating while in Absolut Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation at Aurora Park. They say that Post's eyeglasses and dentures were lost at the facility, making their mother's efforts to eat more difficult.

A spokesman for the facility attributed her death to ailments that made her "vulnerable to Covid-19" and that an on-site state Health Department inspection "found no wrongdoing whatsover" in the treatment of Post.

The Health Department should be in a position to verify the daughters' complaints or back up the nursing home. But a spokesman said no information was publicly available.

Since March 1, Health Department inspectors have conducted more than 1,300 on site "infection control Covid-19 focus inspections" at the state's 613 nursing homes and 544 adult care facilities. They included 143 at Western New York nursing home.

The Health Department deals with thousands of nursing home complaints in any year -- more than 15,000, the spokesman said -- but the empathy belongs to families struggling to find answers about their loved one's care. Getting those answers by resolving the backlog of complaints must be the priority -- carried out as publicly as possible.

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