By Liz Seegert and Joanne Kenen
Lindy Washburn, a health care reporter for the USA Today Network, northjersey.com & The Record, is known for reporting on the many COVID-19 tragedies at VA nursing homes early in the pandemic. Nursing homes in New Jersey (both VA and privately owned) experienced a startling surge of COVID cases and deaths. Joanne Kenen’s “How we did it” on Politico’s investigation of state Veteran’s Affairs nursing homes, highlights Washburn as a must-read journalist if you’re covering local nursing homes.
Actions (or lack of action) at several facilities in New Jersey are under investigation by the state’s attorney general. Sadly, the Garden State is but one example of how mismanagement and lack of oversight contributed to needless deaths and suffering in long-term care facilities.
This is an ongoing story reporters should monitor regularly. However, getting comments from facility administrators, the VA, state officials or families can be challenging.
Here’s Washburn advice, based on her award-winning work and some of what she shared with Investigative Reporters and Editors. Covering the nursing home beat will help you get the topic out there. Sources (family members and workers) will know you are a trusted and informed media person they can start to contact.
-
“Ask for the emails, texts, etc.,” Washburn told Kenen in an e-mail. “The best way to see what was happening in real-time when key decisions were made is communication between the key players. Identify a chain of command, ask for emails over the course of the crisis, assemble chronologically and see what you have.”
-
HIPAA is always a hurdle, but to avoid lengthy battles Washburn recommends asking for “agency records and emails that contain no HIPAA-related information.” (This AHCJ blog post on HIPAA and this article from the Poynter Institute can help inform your approach).
-
“Be gentle and upfront with victims’ families: We wanted families to go on the record but we constantly made sure they were okay with it even up to publication. A question like “Tens of thousands of people are going to read this, are you sure you’re okay with that?” was common. We also told the stories of a select few families who requested anonymity because they feared reprisal against their loved ones.”
-
“Make a timeline: This is essential to not only organizing your documents, interviews and notes, but it allows you to see what’s happening simultaneously from all of your different sources. For instance, our timeline helped us compare how many infections and deaths had occurred when decisions were being made.”
-
Keep families informed. Washburn said her partner on these stories, Scott Fallon, maintains an email listserv of all the families at the state homes that they’ve been in touch with. He emails out every story they do, with a “keeping in touch” note “about how we continue to push for more information and accountability. This has really kept the information flowing, as they forward memos they’ve received from management or observations from their visits.”
Additional resources:
-
The Nursing Home Covid-19 Data Dashboard which tracks resident and staff cases and deaths.
-
Nursing Home Compare from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services can lead you to hospital “star” ratings and flag issues with infection control, staffing or other key indicators of ongoing problems.
-
State health departments: Every state’s health department has a mechanism for inspecting all nursing homes in the state, whether they accept Medicare and Medicaid funding.
-
Although most nursing homes accept federal money, the states do inspections on behalf of the federal government. States generally inspect each facility every 12 to 15 months, but they also investigate complaints. If there are complaints, the state may visit the facility more often. The inspection report is called Form 2567, and it often graphically details the kind of care or lack thereof. The state health department keeps these forms, but they can be difficult to obtain. CMS links each state’s repository for this information, which is often buried deep within a health department’s website.
-
Federal law also requires that each nursing home prominently display the Form 2567, sometimes called the “state survey.” Often, it’s best to go to the nursing home and ask to see the document. By law, it must be “readily accessible” to residents and visitors.
-
For VA nursing homes, you can tap into the Community Living Center Health Surveys, which are run fully by the department. There’s also a helpful page on the VA website that allows you to compare quality in VA and non-VA facilities. (It wasn’t until a 2018 USA Today/Boston Globe story that the VA even acknowledged these surveys existed; it took another year for them to become public. The Senior Veterans Service Alliance maintains a list of state veterans’ homes, which are operated by each state.
