Michigan Governor Whitmer defends COVID’s nursing home policy amid threats of legal action

LANSING, Mich. – Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer faced criticism over a nursing home policy that her administration implemented in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Initially, patients who tested positive for COVID were placed in the same service as patients who did not have COVID. Whitmer ended this practice after the first six months of the pandemic.

There is a growing scrutiny of the policy with the prospect of lawsuits and other legal actions. Whitmer said she remains proud of her team’s overall response to the coronavirus.

READING: Michigan AG reviews requests to investigate state policy on nursing homes

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Whitmer’s policy differs from that of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, because Whitmer did not force COVID-positive patients to live with COVID-negative patients. Instead, Whitmer encouraged the process by paying for residences to receive patients who had contracted COVID-19.

The most current count puts the long-term care death count at 5,537 in Michigan, which is more than 35 percent of all the state’s COVID deaths.

When Cuomo was attacked for allegedly underreporting the number of elderly people sent from nursing homes who died in hospitals, Local 4 filed a freedom of information request to verify Michigan’s numbers. There is none.

READING: Daughter shares the struggle she faced while her elderly mother was at a health center during the COVID-19 pandemic

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The request was returned with data denial, saying: “there are no records of the death site collected”.

“I am proud of the work we have done. We can analyze it from different angles of statistics and compare ourselves with other states, but … I think it can sometimes be a mistake, because the way we are gathering data varies from state to state, ”said Whitmer. “When there is never a national strategy, (it is) difficult to really compare apples to apples.”

Macomb County District Attorney Peter Lucido is expected to announce an effort to sue Whitmer for his nursing home policy.

The Department of Health and Human Services sent an update saying that patients at the nursing home who were transferred to the hospital and later died would be counted as a death at the nursing home – if they had not been discharged from the care unit.

READING: The number of coronavirus deaths at neighboring health facilities in the Detroit metropolitan area may be the worst in the US

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Last year, a report found that Michigan’s plan to create “centers” for nursing home residents with COVID-19 was “logical and appropriate” and found no significant evidence of virus transmission between patients and residents.

The report, released by the Center for Research and Health Transformation (CHRT), assessed the strategy of the regional center for nursing homes in the state, comparing the approach to results in other states. CHRT is a non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Michigan.

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