The fix is obviously in on Cuomo’s ‘investigation’ of nursing-home horrors
News that Team Cuomo ignored warnings about the nursing-home disaster only confirms that the gov’s call for an investigation is pure deflection. He’s trying to make care facility owners the fall guys for the state’s choices.
The Post reports that a Brooklyn nursing home that’s seen New York’s greatest number of COVID-related deaths (55, on the latest list) wrote the state Health Department on April 8 to plead for help.
Cobble Hill Health Center CEO Donny Tuchman e-mailed four officials to report that his facility had “over 50 symptomatic patients scattered through the building and almost no gowns” and warned, “There is no way for us to prevent the spread under these conditions.”
His closing, in hindsight, is heartbreaking: “Is there anything more we can do to protect our patients and staff? Thank you for any help you could be.”
Someone wrote back 20 minutes later — with a standard attachment offering advice on how to conserve personal protective equipment. (In reply, Tuchman repeated the fact that Cobble Hill didn’t have anything to conserve.)
The concerned CEO made another plea the next day, asking if he could send the home’s suspected coronavirus cases to the field hospital at the Javits Center or the USNS Comfort. No dice, came the answer.
So much for the claims from Gov. Cuomo and his health czar, Dr. Howard Zucker, that overwhelmed facilities just needed to ask for help if handed patients they couldn’t safely handle — thanks to Zucker’s March 25 mandate that all homes accept coronavirus-positive cases.
We expect more damning evidence will surface in the days ahead.
Cuomo has asked Attorney General Tish James to lead an investigation that seems fixed from the start: It will find that nursing homes weren’t remotely prepared to respond to a pandemic.
The real investigation should be into why Zucker insisted on sending coronavirus-positive patients to nursing homes, when it’s been clear from the start that the elderly are most at risk from the virus.
And when any health pro must know, as Rochester’s Hurlbut Care Communities CEO Bob Hurlbut put it this week, that “Physical distancing is nearly impossible in the nursing home environment, due to room sharing and the fact that we provide the most intimate level of care, from brushing teeth to bathing and incontinence care.”
Cuomo himself says the virus spreads in nursing homes “like fire through dry grass.”
Yet the gov refuses to admit any mistakes: “The regulation is common sense: If you can’t provide adequate care, you can’t have the patient in your facility, and that’s your basic fiduciary obligation — I would say, ethical obligation — and it’s also your legal obligation.”
And, says the gov, “it’s not our job” to ensure homes have the supplies they need to keep residents and staff safe. Isn’t that the line that drove Cuomo crazy when President Trump took it?
Now he wants his protégé James — and Zucker’s Health Department — to review the performance of the state’s 600 nursing homes and 500 adult-care establishments? Come on.
Yes, they can find some convincing scapegoats: Again, all too many these institutions were troubled before the crisis. Their profits, and the jobs they provide, bought the political power to get away with it.
And when the pandemic hit, Zucker & Co. actually made things worse — fatally so. It’s madness.
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