WASHINGTON — When the Trump administration required nursing homes to report their COVID-19 cases, it also promised to make the data available to residents, families and the public in a user-friendly way.
But some facilities that have had coronavirus cases and deaths turn up as having none on Medicare’s COVID-19 nursing home website. Those data may be incomplete because the reporting requirements don’t reach back to the start of the pandemic. Numbers don’t necessarily portray the full picture.
“The biggest thing that needs to be taken away … is in its current form, it is really leaving consumers in the dark,” Sam Brooks, project manager for Consumer Voice, said of Medicare’s data website. Consumer Voice is a national advocacy group for improved quality in long-term care.