Gov. Doug Ducey won in court on nursing home data. But the rest of Arizona lost

Gov. Doug Ducey won in court on Friday regarding the release of COVID-19 data relating to nursing homes.

On record, media outlets that had sought the data, including The Arizona Republic, lost. In practice, all Arizonans did.

Those who have loved ones in any of the 147 skilled nursing facilities.

Those who are contemplating placement of a loved one in one of the facilities.

Those who advocate for aging adults and public health. And those who want to know where outbreaks have occurred and what the response has been — both by the facility and by the government that provides oversight.

We need transparency to direct resources

State-hired attorneys contended in court that releasing the information violates privacy rights and that the state already requires nursing homes to readily provide COVID-19 information to residents, transferring and prospective residents, their guardians and next of kin.

It’s one disingenuous argument.

Information about a single facility does not make for applicable knowledge. Or context. Using that line of logic, a prospective resident or guardian would have to call numerous nursing homes to triangulate an ideal facility. One is to call 147 places for complete clarity?

Ducey may want to watch the May 21 hearing of U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.

In her testimony, the public health researcher R. Tamara Konetzka said data collection and transparency is critically important so that we know where to direct resources, researchers can discern what worked and what did not, and aging adults and their families can make “their own best decisions.”

“Decisions,” Konetzka said, “that may be about life or death.”

Are deaths affected by race? Ratings?

Ducey and his administration have been stonewalling on releasing COVID-19 cases and deaths of individual nursing homes from the get-go. At one press conference in April, they deflected and said consumers could do their due diligence and check out ratings of individual facilities.

If only those star ratings were an indicator of infection control standards. They are not.

Konetzka testified that in a study of 12 states that released data (Arizona wasn’t among them), researchers found no meaningful relationship between nursing home quality and the probability of COVID-19 cases. Nor did they find meaningful differences between for-profit facilities and nonprofits.

Could the same be said of Arizona’s data? We don’t know.

The one meaningful relationship the 12-state study yielded, Konetzka said, was one involving race. Facilities with the lowest percentage of white residents were more than twice as likely to have COVID-19 cases or deaths than facilities with the highest percentage of white residents.

The researchers theorize that nursing homes draw residents from nearby neighborhoods and that facilities with higher percentage of minorities are in poorer areas.

Does Arizona have a similar trend on race and COVID-19 cases in its nursing homes? Again, we don’t know.

What's being done? We still don't know

The debate over privacy aside — it’s a bogus argument, by the way; data could be released without compromising one’s identity — Arizonans should be troubled that the governor has articulated little, and executed even less, about what’s being done to protect the most vulnerable population in this pandemic.

Not just in the state's nursing homes but also on other long-term care facilities, such as assisted living facilities, despite these places accounting for a majority of COVID-19 deaths.

And why is that?

Here, Konetzka’s testimony is instructive, too.

She said aging adults in nursing homes need as much advocacy and help as possible, pandemic or no, because they are “ill-equipped to monitor their own care,” and “they cannot advocate for themselves or exert political influence.”

Especially so on that last point.

Reach Abe Kwok at akwok@azcentral.com. On Twitter: @abekwok. 

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