Before the mid-December 2020 introduction of COVID-19 vaccines, the pandemic caused approximately 480,000 hospitalizations, and 350,000 deaths in the United States.
KFF Health News found that more than 1,100 covid-related lawsuits, most alleging wrongful death or other negligent care, were filed against nursing homes from March 2020 through March of this year.
In a new study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers have created a dataset and data visualization dashboard to evaluate the effectiveness of state and territory-level policies enacted to reduce the severity of COVID-19's impact on older people served by home health care agencies and nursing homes.
The authors found many policies within states and territories did not correspond with reductions in community or nursing home-level COVID-19 burden (i.e. number of cases and mortality counts). This suggests that policy effectiveness may depend on implementation and compliance. The study also found that policies focused less on home health care agencies compared with nursing homes, despite both settings serving vulnerable older populations.