Amid excessive climate, congressional investigation sounds alarm on nursing properties’ emergency preparedness 

Nearly half of the 1,200 nursing properties in Texas reported energy or water outages, evacuations or different emergencies to state regulators through the 2021 storm, which struck within the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the committees’ investigation discovered. At least 1,400 nursing-home and assisted-living residents have been evacuated, and two residents died, in keeping with the report. 

Since 2018, excessive climate occasions in 17 states have pressured long-term-care facility evacuations or led to resident accidents and deaths, the report mentioned. “This report should serve as a warning sign — as we experience more frequent and catastrophic climate disasters, long-term care facilities must be better prepared to protect residents living there,” Sen. Bob Casey, the Pennsylvania Democrat who chairs the Senate Special Committee on Aging, mentioned in an announcement. 

New guidelines are wanted to make sure the security of long-term-care residents, the report mentioned, calling on federal regulators to require that nursing properties have emergency energy able to sustaining secure temperatures and urging federal, state and native officers to coordinate with electrical energy suppliers to make sure that nursing properties get increased precedence for energy restoration throughout emergencies, amongst different measures.   

The early 2021 storm, generally known as Winter Storm Uri, underscored longstanding gaps in long-term-care amenities’ emergency preparedness. During on-site inspections of 154 nursing properties in eight states performed in 2018 and 2019, the Health and Human Services Department’s inspector basic discovered violations of life security and emergency preparedness necessities at nearly all the amenities, in keeping with a report launched final 12 months. “As a result, residents, visitors, and staff at the nursing homes were at increased risk of injury or death during a fire or other emergency,” the report mentioned. 

Some amenities had no mills, inadequate emergency water provides, fireplace exit doorways that will not open, insufficient backup energy for fireplace alarms, or lacked carbon-monoxide detectors, amongst different points, in keeping with the inspector basic’s report. 

Past pure disasters have additionally taken a heavy toll on weak sufferers, resulting from blackouts, staffing shortages, botched evacuations and different points. A 2020 examine by researchers at Brown University and the University of South Florida discovered greater than 430 extra deaths amongst nursing-home residents uncovered to Hurricane Irma, which hit Florida in 2017. A 2006 report on Hurricane Katrina by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs famous that many New Orleans–space nursing properties lacked enough evacuation plans and that 235 individuals had died in Louisiana nursing properties and hospitals.  

Long-term-care-industry commerce group American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living mentioned in an announcement that “the vast majority of long term care facilities successfully implement their emergency plans, and the heroic actions of staff help ensure the safety and well-being of countless lives when such events occur.” Nursing properties are already topic to intensive federal emergency-preparedness laws, with extra state guidelines making use of to nursing properties and assisted-living amenities, the group mentioned, including that “long term care facilities should be prioritized by local, state, and federal agencies for power and water restoration, resources, and supplies.” 

In amenities affected by Storm Uri that lacked energy or backup mills, “the common solution was to pile on blankets and stay in bed,” Texas state long-term-care ombudsman Patty Ducayet wrote in a January 2022 letter to Casey and fellow Senate Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. “This may have been the best we could do at the time, but it should sound alarm bells about the vulnerability of emergency response within facilities and the health risks that residents face in extreme weather events.” 

Neither federal nor Texas state laws require long-term-care amenities to provide HVAC techniques with backup energy, Ducayet wrote within the letter, though nursing amenities are required to keep up secure temperatures and energy fireplace alarms, emergency lighting and different emergency techniques. 

“Long-term-care facilities should have generators that can power their heating and cooling and other essential services that will fail with power loss,” Ducayet informed MarketWatch. “It must be a requirement, and it must be enforced.”