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Indiana Announces New Reporting Standards for Nursing Homes During Covid-19
As you have probably seen on the news, nursing home residents are among the most at-risk populations during the Covid-19 outbreak. As such, Dr. Dan Rusyniak, chief medical officer for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, announced a set of new reporting requirements for long-term care facilities. Operators will soon be required to provide residents and their designated representatives with daily briefings on the number of positive and newly positive residents, the number of deaths from COVID-19 and changes made to address staffing shortages at those facilities.
According to the Indiana State Department of Health, an estimated 650,000 Hoosiers live in Indiana’s 535 nursing homes and 202 free-standing licensed assisted living facilities. So far, Rusyniak said 148 of those facilities have reported at least one positive case of COVID-19 and 85 have reported at least one death from the virus.
Facilities will be required to dedicate a staff person as the contact for residents and designated representatives, as well as establish additional lines of communication for information about the pandemic’s impact on operations. Standardized information will also have to be submitted to reporting authorities each Friday so that state level reports can be generated each Monday.