Michigan Governor Whitmer Adheres to COVID Nursing Home Policy Amid Threats of Legal Action

LANSING, Mich. The Michigan government, Gretchen Whitmer, has been criticized for an old age home policy that instituted her administration in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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

The policy is increasingly being investigated with a view to litigation and other legal action. Whitmer said she remains proud of her team’s overall response to the coronavirus.

READ: Michigan AG investigates requests to investigate state’s nursing home policy

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Whitmer’s policy differs from that of the New York Government, Andrew Cuomo, because Whitmer did not force COVID-positive patients to stay with COVID-negative patients. Instead, Whitmer encouraged the process by paying homes to take patients who contracted COVID-19.

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

When Cuomo came under fire for allegedly underreporting the number of seniors sent from nursing homes who died in hospitals, Local 4 filed a Freedom of Information request to look at Michigan’s numbers. There is not.

READ: Daughter shares the struggle she faced while her elderly mother was in a care center during a pandemic in COVID-19

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The request was returned with denial of information, saying: “There are no records of the place where the death was collected.”

“I am proud of the work we have done. “We can analyze different statistical angles and compare ourselves with other states, but … I think that can sometimes be a fool’s errand, because the way we collect data differs from state to state,” Whitmer said. “If there’s never a national strategy, it’s hard to really compare apples to apples.”

Macomb County prosecutor Peter Lucido is expected to announce an attempt to prosecute Whitmer for her nursing home policies.

The Department of Health and Human Services has sent an update stating that patients in nursing homes who were transferred to the hospital and then died would be considered a nursing home death – if they were not discharged from the care facility.

READ: Coronavirus deaths in neighboring Metro Detroit care facilities could be worst in US

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

The report, issued by the Center for Health and Research Transformation (CHRT), evaluates the regional strategy of the state’s nursing home center and compares the approach to the outcomes in other states. CHRT is a non-profit enterprise at the University of Michigan.

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