Column: Long-term care facilities need support battling COVID

It’s been a little more than three months since America woke up to COVID-19 as one of the greatest public health threats in American history. Residents and caregivers in long-term care settings, including skilled nursing homes and assisted living communities, have borne the brunt of this virus.

Newly released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that at least 1,000 residents have died from the virus in Georgia and 30,000 nursing home residents have died nationally, giving the American public confirmation of this and validating our cries for help from federal, state and local health agencies.

For residents of long-term care facilities, their families, and for the caregivers working with them, the statistics are grim. The answer as to why is predictably and maddeningly simple: older adults – and particularly those with underlying health conditions – are at higher risk for developing serious complications from COVID-19. And yet policymakers and public health officials in Washington and Atlanta have not, until recently, equipped caregivers with the resources necessary to combat the virus.

We may have been forced to go to war with the army we have, but we cannot win without outfitting those on the front lines with equipment and tools to defend themselves.

The Georgia Emergency Management Agency and the state Department of Public Health are working to meet the needs for nursing homes, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently sent two shipments, each with seven days' worth of surgical masks, gloves, eye protection and gowns, to all of them. But long-term care communities need a continuous supply.

Further, assisted living communities are not afforded the benefits nursing homes have belatedly received. Caregivers still clock-in with homemade masks, gowns sewn by local seamstresses and painters’ suits.

Yet, as important as it is to outfit the more than 107,000 residents and caregivers in Georgia long-term care facilities with a steady and reliable supply of PPE, we would still be playing from behind because we cannot see the enemy. Testing is the essential tool needed to protect lives.

More than half of elderly Americans who have tested positive for the virus do not have symptoms, but spread the virus and potentially infect others. This leaves us with only one solution to protect residents and caregivers. We must insist upon adequate, reliable, and repeated testing for all long-term care residents and caregivers, whether they show symptoms or not. We need technology and testing processes that will allow for onsite testing with real time results.

Gov. Brian Kemp is prioritizing testing for nursing home residents. He’s also made the Georgia National Guard available to assist with aggressive cleaning and disinfecting of facilities that need extra support. These decisions are helpful, responsible and prudent. But more is necessary if we are to move beyond recovery celebrations, window visits, video chats and socially distanced parades.

We have to test again and again and again. This is an unprecedented situation. It calls for unprecedented action. Unfortunately, providers in Georgia and elsewhere are not equipped to shoulder the burden of doing so.

In Georgia alone, testing everyone living or working in a nursing home or assisted living community – just once – will cost more than $16 million. Weekly testing for the same population will cost more than $838 million annually. The staggering costs will require a mix of state and federal support. There is no way around it.

To the credit of providers who took decisive action when leadership mattered most, the overwhelming majority of tests that have been administered come back negative. Those who do test positive are recovering more often than not, but not a week goes by without grief rippling through our communities.

Despite the challenges, caregivers will press on. They will battle with what they have. They will stand beside and in front of residents to comfort and protect them, risking their own health and the health of their loved ones in the process. The steely determination they have shown is a demonstration of the compassion and commitment to selfless service that residents and their families expect in good times and in bad. That’s their charge to keep. Our responsibility is to ensure they do not fail.

Residents and their families know that safety is and always will be the first priority for caregivers. Extraordinary measures have been implemented. Federal, state and local bureaucracies cannot maintain the status quo. The coronavirus has exposed serious gaps in public health policy funding, and the most vulnerable in our society need immediate and permanent change.

The writer is president and CEO of the Georgia Health Care Association.