By ANISH KOKA, MD

Our strategy with nursing homes in the midst of the current pandemic is bad.  Nursing homes and other long term care facilities house some of our sickest patients in and it is apparent we have no cogent strategy to protect them. 

I attempted to reassure an anxious nursing home resident a few weeks ago. I told him that it appeared for now that the community level transmission in Philadelphia was low, and that I was optimistic we could keep residents safe with simple maneuvers like better hand hygiene, restricting visitors, as well as stricter policies with regards to keeping caregivers with symptoms home.  I was worried too, but optimistic.

I figured the larger medical community would be on the same page if someone did get COVID.  It made sense to me to be aggressive about testing staff and residents and quickly getting COVID-positive patients out of the nursing home.  So when I heard of the first patient that was positive in the nursing home, my heart sank, but it fell even further when I found out the COVID-positive patient was sent back from the hospital because they weren’t “sick enough” to be admitted.