The Parker Jewish Institute for Health Care and Rehabilitation on the Queens-Nassau border has the highest number of coronavirus deaths of any of the 362 nursing homes in New York that have reported COVID-19 fatalities.
According to the New York State Department of Health, there have been 74 confirmed coronavirus-related deaths at Parker Jewish, as of Thursday.
While the nursing home is listed under a New Hyde Park address, the state Health Department classifies it as a Queens facility.
Other facilities in Nassau County with high numbers of coronavirus fatalities include Excel at Woodbury for Rehabilitation and Nursing, with 21 confirmed and five presumed coronavirus deaths; Highfield Gardens Care Center of Great Neck, with 21 confirmed; Nassau Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, with none confirmed and 32 presumed; Sunharbor Manor, with 23 confirmed and 10 presumed; the Grand Rehabilitation and Nursing at Great Neck, with 15 confirmed and 9 presumed; and White Oaks Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, with 29 confirmed.
“The total numbers of reported deaths per institution is greatly shaped by how long a given facility has been capable of producing data,” Parker spokesperson Lina Scacco told Blank Slate Media. “Test kits were not evenly available to all institutions throughout this pandemic. Parker, utilizing CORE Labs, began to test and report infections in March. Deaths occurring at institutions prior to their ability to test for COVID-19 may not be accurately reported as COVID related.”
She added that Parker made the decision early on to classify any death where the resident was COVID-positive as a coronavirus death, even if the immediate cause was likely a comorbid condition, such as heart failure.
Families of Parker residents have reported insufficient protective measures, understaffing and not enough communication with family members about their loved ones and the conditions within the facility.
Ricky Russo, whose mother is a Parker resident and has so far avoided contracting the virus, told Patch that there were times when a nurse would attend to both her and residents with coronavirus down the hall from her single room.
He recalled how his mother first became aware of the seriousness of the situation.
“All of a sudden, my mother calls me and said she’s seen body bags roll by her room on a daily basis,” Russo said in a phone interview with Patch.
“They’re dropping left and right here and they’re not telling us anything,” Russo’s mother reportedly told him.
Scacco said that the Parker Jewish team is in constant communication with families, noting that a Family Call Center was set up to facilitate residents’ communication with their loved ones.
Michael Camarda said in an interview with Patch that his father has been a Parker resident since 2016 and is bedridden. Camarda reported that his father spent hours sitting in his own waste and was not given his medication on time. When he called to complain in March, a nurse told him that the facility was short-staffed.
His father tested positive for COVID-19 in early April, Camarda said, after coronavirus patients were moved to his floor.
“He’s in a private room, so the only way for him to come in contact with COVID is through a nurse or a doctor,” Camarda said.
Parker Jewish has 527 beds and about 1,300 employees, according to public tax records.
The facility is one of the largest nursing homes in the country, and has programs designed to meet a range of specific needs. Parker offers an advanced Alzheimer’s care program, a dialysis center and a hospice and palliative care unit.
“Treating more residents and patients with these advanced health conditions could drive up the number that ultimately succumb to COVID-19, although there is no data to suggest that Parker has experienced proportionately greater mortalities than other institutions,” Scacco said.
The number of reported coronavirus deaths in nursing facilities increased drastically on May 4, when state officials released more data on nursing home deaths following the Health Department’s rollout of more stringent rules regarding nursing homes reporting virus fatalities to the state.
At least 1,050 people have died from the virus in nursing homes on Long Island, including 457 in Nassau County, according to data released by the state. This is 70 percent higher than the number of nursing home deaths reported on Long Island before the new reporting guidelines for facilities.
The exact toll remains uncertain since this number does not include residents who were moved to hospitals, and the cause of death is still unknown in many cases.
On Sunday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo reversed a directive made by the state Health Department on March 25 saying that nursing homes cannot turn away potential residents who have tested positive for COVID-19 simply because they have the virus. Before the release of new guidelines, under which hospitals cannot release COVID-19 patients to nursing homes, Parker Jewish was admitting residents who had tested positive for coronavirus.
“If the hospital calls and says, ‘I want to send back a person who had COVID but is now better to the nursing home,’ if the nursing home doesn’t think they can take them they shouldn’t and all they have to do is say ‘no’ and tell the Department of Health, and that person will go somewhere else,” said Cuomo.
“So it really comes down to that nursing home has to know what its limits are, who can provide care for – and who can’t provide care for – and we have alternatives,” he said.
Elected officials and public health experts expressed concern following the March 25 announcement that introducing coronavirus patients into a nursing facility setting was risky. Alternative proposed solutions included caring for elderly COVID-19 patients in other care facilities, such as the temporary hospital at the Javits Center in Manhattan.
State officials said that the March 25 directive was spurred by fear that nursing facilities would discriminate against coronavirus patients. The intent of the directive was to remind nursing homes of their obligation to accept these patients, so long as they had the space, staff and equipment to care for them, officials said.
Cuomo also directed hospitals to begin reporting to the state which patients had come from a nursing home on May 1.
“The question we’re now asking the hospitals – one of the questions that I posed: Was someone transferred from a nursing home to a hospital and then passed away in the hospital? And we want to know that,” Cuomo said in a news conference.
Hempstead Village leaders said that the federal government should have addressed the vulnerability of nursing home residents following the coronavirus outbreak inside a Seattle-area nursing home in early March.
There are nine nursing homes in and within close proximity of the Village of Hempstead.
In a news conference last Wednesday, Hempstead Mayor Don Ryan and Trustee Lamont Johnson proposed a three-pronged action plan to address the mounting death toll in nursing homes: a federal investigation, more funding from the state and greater transparency from health care facility staff and administrators.
Johnson’s mother, 77-year-old Lillian Johnson, lives in Fulton Commons Care Center, which has been hard hit by the pandemic.
“I would like to see mandatory testing of all [nursing home] staff, that’s a start,” Johnson said. “Mandatory testing of all staff, mandatory testing of everyone that is in the facility.”
U.S. Reps. Kathleen Rice (D-Garden City), Gregory Meeks (D-Queens) and Grace Meng (D-Queens) called for additional funding in the next phase of federal coronavirus aid to go to nursing homes in a letter on Tuesday.
“Our nursing homes and long-term care providers have been some of the hardest hit facilities during this pandemic,” Rice said in an emailed statement. “We must build on the support allocated for them in previous relief packages and provide new funding to help them pay staff, acquire PPE, and increase testing. No expense should be spared when it comes to protecting our most vulnerable communities, and I thank Representatives Meeks and Meng for joining in this effort to support them.”
