State changes course, to release facility-specific nursing home virus data

After months of refusing to provide facility-specific COVID-19 nursing home data, state officials are reversing course.

Dan Rusyniak, chief medical officer for Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, announced the change during Wednesday’s state pandemic press briefing, saying the state is creating a database that will show by facility when cases occurred, how many residents and staff have died from COVID-19, how many have recovered and demographics for those infected.

Before now, the state has repeatedly refused to provide facility-specific information when asked by the media but allowed those facilities and local health departments to release their own numbers, if they chose to do so. The state has released collective numbers for all facilities on a weekly basis.

Rusyniak said the change comes after a couple of the largest associations that represent long-term-care facilities and the AARP, which advocates for residents at th0se facilities, expressed support for more transparency.

“As we have all learned, responding to this pandemic requires us to continually evaluate our approaches, and when appropriate, to change them,” Rusyniak said. “This is one of those times.”

But Rusyniak said it will “take some time” to compile the data and prepare the public dashboard of statistics.

He said he expects to gather all of the information from the long-term care facilities by mid-July, and the preliminary data will become available to the public at that time. Another two to four weeks after that, he said, the user-friendly dashboard should be up and running.

“It’s going to take some time, but that time is necessary to follow the process so that we can have an informative and updatable interactive public dashboard moving forward,” Rusyniak said.

Nearly half of the state’s 2,456 COVID-19-related deaths have occurred in long-term-care facilities. As of Monday, 277 facilities had at least one positive case and 178 have seen at least one death. The cumulative total positive cases in long-term-care facilities is 5,342.

Rusyniak said the state has finished testing 40,000 employees who work at more than 480 facilities, which is something the White House had recommended in May.

The state has not tested all nursing home residents, though, despite that also being part of the recommendation from the White House. Instead, the state has provided targeted testing to focus on residents who might have been exposed.

Rusyniak said the situation appears to be improving at long-term-care facilities—the number of weekly new cases is down 77% and weekly deaths are down 83%, compared to the peak in late April.

“This early success has also allowed us to start to loosen visitation restrictions,” Rusyniak said.

The start started allowing outdoor visits at long-term-care facilities last month.

On Wednesday, Rusyniak said visitations for salon care and other personal services will be allowed at the facilities, and indoor visitations for family and friends will begin as early as Saturday at some locations. Other locations are expected to open for indoor visits by mid-July.

“Families and residents have waited patiently through this pandemic to be rejoined,” Rusyniak said. “We must now do our part to make sure that this happens.”