Texas nursing homes trying to protect residents from COVID-19 need support, not sniping
COVID-19 has claimed lives and strained the emotional and mental health of nursing-home residents. It has also revealed that the staff members who are blessed to care for them are heroes.
From the beginning, nursing facility staff have worked around the clock in facilities with undeniable, elevated risk, fighting an unknown virus with the world watching. Unfortunately, AARP Texas recently painted long-term care staff as villains in this fight.
The group correctly pointed out that Texas nursing homes struggle to acquire enough personal protective equipment to keep residents and staff safe, at no fault of their own. Testing has been inconsistent and slow, making it impossible to identify and curb COVID-19 infections at the necessary pace. In fact, when the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a plan to deliver test kits to all 15,000 facilities across the U.S., it was able to procure only 3,000 kits a week later.
Rather than supporting long-term care facilities and staff, AARP Texas chose to blame those risking their health to care for others. The group claims that these facilities don’t have enough resources to properly manage the virus. But it also plays the blame game, using words such as “neglect” and “abuse” to tear at an already-stretched profession and exhausted workforce.
These mixed messages are a dangerous distraction, taking the focus away from getting the supplies and resources needed from local, state, and national leaders.
Long-term care facilities continue to face staffing challenges. Texas nursing facilities have been lowly paid by the state Medicaid program for decades, and long-term care staffers don’t earn nearly as much as their peers in other areas of healthcare.
COVID-19 guidance and restrictions on employee movement have further diminished workforce levels, with staff unable to work at more than one facility as they have typically done. Other staff members have become sick and missed work or been forced to quit out of fear for their and their families’ health.
Anyone who is working in a long-term care facility will tell you that residents’ emotional health has suffered as the virus has robbed them of cherished person-to-person interaction. However, facilities must follow federal and state guidelines that restrict in-person visitors.
Staffers are doing their best to fill the gap with ever-loving attention and technology. But nothing can replace in-person contact and the love and kinship of family and friends.
Rather than using its influence to support residents being able to reconnect with their loved ones, the AARP Texas chose data to fit its pre-existing narrative. While citing a federal report indicating 80% of nursing homes across the country have been cited for infection control violations, it omitted that the report also said, “nearly all infection prevention and control deficiencies (about 99 percent in each year) were classified by surveyors as not severe, meaning the surveyor determined that residents were not harmed.”
According to academic research, infection rates are directly linked to the presence of COVID-19 in the community. Long-term care staff is fiercely dedicated to residents. Instead of support and encouragement, we’re seeing blame being placed on the profession by an organization that claims to support seniors and those that care for them.
Long-term care facilities will continue to fight for resources and do everything in our power to protect our residents, as we have from the very start. We welcome anyone who joins in on this imperative conversation, but especially those who realize that their voices can be used most constructively to ask leaders for what we need to better control this virus and protect the vulnerable Texans in our care.