Do You Have Someone in a Life Care?

If you do they're killin' it ... literally.

We all know about that first bad cluster in Washington state. It was a Life Care facility, but it turns out that the first fatality in the Kansas City area was also at a LIfe Care facility. They also operate a facility in St. Louis that has multiple cases.

And this is the latest:

Eighteen people at a Kansas nursing home have tested positive for the coronavirus COVID-19, according to a spokesperson.

The executive director of the Life Care Center said they learned about the first case in Burlington, Kansas, located a little over an hour south of Topeka, last Thursday. Now 11 residents and seven staff members are sick.

So now they have another cluster in one of their facilities with hospitalizations and both residents and staff who are ill.

Seems to me there must be some kind of serious flaw in their operating policy somewhere to be having this many breakdowns.

a reply to: ketsuko

Target the weak?

can't say I'm surprised, it's probably rare that you'll find a nursing home or any care facilities that actually care for patients beyond the minimum, there's so few nurses to go around that they're over burdened. nothing against nurses working there but such places are breeding nests for viruses and bacteria, moreso than hospitals.

I get that nursing facilities are difficult at the best of times, but this seems to me to be a specific instance of a weakness in company protocol.

Here you have four facilities all with the same problem all run by the same company.

It's not like you have four facilities all run by different operators.

originally posted by: carsforkids
a reply to: ketsuko

Target the weak?

Or the quality of life maintained there ?
I vote my answer.

a reply to: Gothmog

Or the quality of life maintained there ?
I vote my answer.

Hmmm the difference escapes me.

I saw this on the news the other day.....not sure why my area picked it up...but this one is a chain in Michigan, and not the same as Life Care.
www.freep.com...

You can look to the administrative level for a lot of the problems. Limits on supplies, to save money- such as only allowing night shift one diaper per patient. Buying the cheapest on the market, that tear when you try to use them. Always running out of masks and gloves.

I am speaking to the way all too many nursing homes operate. Won't even comment on the quality of care their low-paid employees, who are only there because the need a job, give their patients.

The bottom line is profit, at the expense of the staff and sadly, patients.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

This is the real nugget in your article.

Eleven senior, long-term care or independent living facilities had been impacted by COVID-19 in Oakland County as of Friday morning, said Bill Mullan, spokesman for Oakland County Executive David Coulter.

Across those 11, there have been 36 confirmed COVID-19 positives of residents or employees. Of the 36 positive cases, there have been five deaths, Mullan said.

It's not just that 1. There are 11 senior facilities that have clusters accounting for 36 cases and 5 deaths. Now do the math for that area again ... how many cases are left over?

This is bad, but we've been watching the rise of these types of facilities for the Boomer generation as they age and lose the ability and/or desire to live on their own.

The same is happening in France. Some days ago, 20 old people have died in the same nursing home, today 7 more deaths in another nursing home, and there have been more deaths in other nursing homes. At first, they didn't count theses deaths as part of the covid death toll, because no one was being tested for covid before or after their death and there is usually a higher death count due to the "normal" flu.

a reply to: gosseyn
Testing after death?
How many people die of other causes but then test positive for corona and are then added to the numbers of 'death by corona'?

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: gosseyn
Testing after death?
How many people die of other causes but then test positive for corona and are then added to the numbers of 'death by corona'?

There is this article that explains it well.

And two of the hardest-hit areas in the nation — New York City and Los Angeles County — released guidance earlier this week encouraging doctors not to test patients unless they think the test will significantly change their course of treatment. That means that potentially more people in both places could be admitted to hospitals with severe respiratory symptoms and recover — or die — and not be registered as a coronavirus case.

For months, the CDC instructed state and local health departments to send tissue samples from all suspected COVID-19 deaths to them so the CDC could test for the disease. On Wednesday the agency issued new guidelines, since access to tests is increasing: Now, the agency only recommends that departments incapable of testing people, both alive and dead, send samples to the CDC.

If it is a facility with Life Care in the name I would not be surprised. A relative of mine has been in and out of a few of them for physical rehab.

I was not impressed with the facilities or the staff. If there is not a person in charge supervising the "mice" they will play.

An example the "mice" will take all of the good snacks before offering any to the patients.

Before the WuFlu the staff did not practice the best hygene / protective processes.

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: gosseyn
Testing after death?
How many people die of other causes but then test positive for corona and are then added to the numbers of 'death by corona'?

The first death we had in the state of Kansas was an elderly man from the, yes, Life Care who was taken to the hospital with cardiac symptoms. However, they noticed other symptoms like a high fever while they were treating him that made them suspicious. Despite everything they did, he passed not a day later, but they had him tested posthumously because of the other symptoms they were seeing, and he turned up positive, and small cluster was uncovered in his facility -- 3 or 4 others.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The biggest issue which prevents the whole lock down thing from working as it should, is the people most at risk are the most at need for contact with other people, who are essential and thus not on lock down.

It does not matter how careful everybody is, the elderly are the most exposed, and the lock down barely effects that.

If the people most at risk of needing hospitalization remain the most exposed regardless of the stay at home order then how is the stay at home order supposed to prevent hospitals from becoming over burdened?

Then you've got stores with the whole senior hour thing, like it's not bad enough seniors are most at risk, we now want to have them all come to the store to be exposed to each other and the workers for basic groceries.

How about free delivery for seniors, and give them dibs on what first comes off the shipment trucks. Certainly better than having them wander around for an hour, something most can't even do. Resulting often in the more able seniors buying groceries on behalf of their elderly neighbors, who they have personal contact with both before and after.

a reply to: Puppylove

The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Even with delivery, one infected delivery worker endangers everyone connected to it. There is no perfect way to isolate all our most vulnerable.

The problem here is the senior lifestyle communities, and while I see the benefits in good times with well-run ones, in times like these, they become as dangerous as dense urban living is.

a reply to: ketsuko

I agree, but there has to be something better than we are doing now. There ways to mitigate some of these issues that a proper use of funds and procedures could manage. What we're doing now is haphazard with very little real planning or strategy.

I realize part of the issue is scope and politics. That's an issue with our society though. We don't have proper plans and strategies in place, and any attempt to establish them has to be filtered through political corruption and corporate greed first which neuters the whole process. Hell just look at the stupid stimulus thing for an example of political corruption and the lack of a stockpile of necessary medical supplies for financial cost cutting greed.