Table of Content
Former Governor George Pataki lambasted Andrew Cuomo in February 2021, saying the "cover-up is worse than the crime". New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called for further investigations into Cuomo and his administration's handling of the crisis. Assemblymember Ron Kim told the New York Post he believed Cuomo committed "obstruction of criminal investigations of health care offenses".
We were still making major decisions about what sectors of the economy would be safe to reopen or close when there was still massive PPE shortages and while we were being shot at on a daily basis from Donald Trump—that we needed to go through these reams of data. It was based on the data that they thought they died in the hospital because they didn’t know for sure. It was based on co-morbidities that the list of the co-morbidities are pneumonia, cancer, HIV/AIDS—and they’re guessing that because it was around that time, maybe it was COVID. This was a massive undertaking and it was happening while we were still at the height of the pandemic. The Cuomo Administration has been under fire for several months about its handling of nursing homes and the coronavirus pandemic. A January report by the New York Attorney General’s Office found the New York State Department of Health may have undercounted the number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50%.
Cuomo Accepts Some Blame in Nursing Home Scandal but Denies Cover-Up
He also said Cuomo had personally called him and told him he'd "destroy" him for criticizing his administration. When asked for comment on Kim's allegation, de Blasio called it "classic Andrew Cuomo" in an interview with Morning Joe on MSNBC. On February 12, 2021, more legislators criticized Cuomo, with 14 Democratic state senators joining the Republican Senate minority in calling for Cuomo's emergency powers to be rescinded. CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, the host of Cuomo Prime Time, had been subject to a rule that CNN put in place in 2013 that prevented him from interviewing or covering his brother Andrew Cuomo. In November 2021, a report by the New York State Assembly found that Cuomo's executive chamber had "substantially revised" the report to exclude deaths of nursing home residents at hospitals in order to boost Cuomo's reputation. Attorney Seth DuCharme of the Eastern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have launched an investigation into New York state's handling of nursing home deaths.
The Cold Spring Hills lawsuit comes three days after the attorney general sued another nursing home, Fulton Commons Care Center in East Meadow. In that suit, James accused the operators of patient neglect, using public money to pad the payroll and underreporting COVID-19 deaths. Newsday reported in September 2020, a month after its investigation was published, that the state attorney general’s office had launched its own investigation of Cold Spring Hills.
andrew cuomo
The new data echoes a Government Accountability Office report from a decade ago, which found that investor-owned nursing homes "had more total deficiencies than nonprofit homes both before and after acquisition." A spokesman for the State Assembly, Michael Whyland, also tweeted that while the governor’s staff had “reached out to staff and said they needed more time to supply information requested by the members,” there was no mention of a federal investigation at the time. But he insisted that lawmakers’ leadership staff was informed of that delay and said that the federal inquiry was reported in the news media. The governor’s explanation was quickly criticized by legislative leaders, who said they were not told that the delay was a result of a possible federal inquiry. They also questioned why it took Mr. Cuomo’s administration five months to respond to lawmakers after it had responded to the federal request in early September. Gov. Andrew Cuomo admitted to a delay and that he “created pain,” but stopped short of a full apology for the state’s withholding of virus death data from state lawmakers.
In March 1892, Hesse showed his rebellious character, and, in one instance, he fled from the Seminary and was found in a field a day later. Hesse began a journey through various institutions and schools and experienced intense conflicts with his parents. In May, after an attempt at suicide, he spent time at an institution in Bad Boll under the care of theologian and minister Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt. Later, he was placed in a mental institution in Stetten im Remstal, and then a boys' institution in Basel. At the end of 1892, he attended the Gymnasium in Cannstatt, now part of Stuttgart.
WATCH: President Biden and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine hold a joint news conference
And it contends the median number of coronavirus patients sent to nursing homes had been hospitalized for nine days, the same period that the study said it likely takes for the virus to no longer be contagious. Then in January, Ms. James reported that the administration had undercounted virus-related deaths of nursing home residents by several thousand. Hours later, the Health Department added more than 3,800 such deaths to its tally. The Health Department report revived questions about how New York was counting such deaths.
He claimed that New York state did not cover-up the number of deaths in nursing homes, but acknowledged that officials should have released the information earlier. At no time did anyone threaten to 'destroy' anyone with their 'wrath' nor engage in a ‘cover-up." These were the same type of patients, however, that the researchers discovered experienced higher mortality rates in private equity-owned facilities. In other words, the reduced staffing levels at private equity-owned nursing homes could help explain the facilities' higher death rates. The controversial directive for New York nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients increased the death toll among residents — and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s claims otherwise have been disproven, according to a New York State Bar Association report exclusively obtained by The Post.
“No one would argue with the need for nursing homes to maintain adequate levels of PPE, but this was an order to stockpile PPE at the moment of highest cost and least supply,” the report says. The owners diverted $22.6 million in Medicaid and Medicare funding that the attorney general's complaint said "should have been spent on resident care." Cold Spring Hills’ unionized employees expressed concerns about worsening working conditions “multiple times over the past few years,” according to Daine Williams, executive vice president of 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. The suit, filed in Nassau County Supreme Court, also seeks an independent health care monitor to oversee residents' care, and a financial monitor. The 186-page complaint, obtained by Newsday, said the owners of Long Island’s second-largest nursing home profited by diverting $22.6 million in government funding from resident care.
The man yelled, “Get me my f—ing TV right now or I am going to start breaking s—! ” The man then went into another resident’s room and ripped away that individual’s oxygen supply. The state also alleges during the pandemic, the staff failed to report 51 of its 98 COVID deaths. The allegations also include staffing cuts, poor conditions including dirty rooms, inadequate care and financial fraud totaling $22.6 million, money that the state claims owners diverted for themselves from Medicaid and Medicare funds. In a statement, James said that "Cold Spring Hill's owners put profits over patient care and left vulnerable New Yorkers to live in heartbreaking and inhumane conditions," and encouraged anyone who witnessed some of the alleged abuse and neglect to contact her office. More than $15 million in phony rent payments were mad to Cold Spring Realty — which just so happens to be owned by the same people who operate the nursing home, the investigation found.
Inspectors also reported that while they watched, a worker went into several residents’ rooms and placed their pills on a bedside table and then walked out without assisting the residents or making sure they took their pills. One worker said she attempted to de-escalate the situation by placing her hand between the resident and the director of nursing, only to have the director of nursing push it away. Workers said the director of nursing “antagonized and badgered” the resident repeatedly, and that the two “yelled and screamed for 10 minutes” before the man yelled, “Get the f— out,” and the confrontation ended. The Osage Rehab and Heath Care Center in Mitchell County could be facing federal fines for violations related to a resident who was smoking methamphetamine in the home, and a tyrannical nurse who allegedly left residents in fear for their safety. CBS2 tried to get a hold of managers at Cold Spring Hills multiple times Friday.
Between last week’s court order and tonight’s formal response, the department posted new death totals for each facility, including hospital deaths that had previously been omitted. Those revelations increased the known death toll from about 9,000 to almost 15,000—making clear that the pandemic’s toll on long-term care residents was much worse than the Cuomo administration previously portrayed it to be. The policy, which differed from those followed in other states, effectively hid the total number of nursing home residents who had died of the virus. The attorney general’s lawsuit comes 28 months after Newsday’s investigation — “Crisis, Care and Tragedy on LI” — exposed the impact of the pandemic on the Cold Spring Hills residents, families and staff. The investigation also revealed the 588-bed facility’s place in the owners’ collection of profit-making nursing homes. According to a Spotlight PA report, there continues to be missing data for more than 100 of the state’s 693 nursing homes, reported weekly by the state’s health department.
No comments:
Post a Comment