A Southwest Portland nursing home has said it accidentally reported eight coronavirus staff deaths, solving the mystery behind striking – but incorrect – federal government data.
In fact, the Robison Jewish Health Center has had no coronavirus deaths at all and just one confirmed infection – an employee who has recovered and is now back at work.
Administrator Krista Mattox said she found out about her error Thursday, three days after the federal report unleashed a flurry of concern among lawmakers and state officials.
“I went, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Mattox said. “’How did this get in there?’”
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requires that homes report detailed information about the coronavirus, including suspected or confirmed staff and resident cases, supply shortages and the number of residents at the facility. Nursing homes nationwide have had mere weeks to learn the software that feeds into the national system.
The state-level nursing home data that the federal agency published Monday showed 55 resident and eight staff deaths in Oregon. Those numbers didn’t match Oregon’s own numbers, which showed 55 deaths total – including all categories of people, including residents, staff and close contacts.
The report does not say which nursing home reported the numbers. It also doesn’t include deaths at assisted living centers and retirement homes, which now number 34 in Oregon.
But the news was particularly noteworthy because Oregon health officials have repeatedly refused to say how many, if any, health care workers have died in senior care homes or other medical settings.
The Oregon Department of Human Services, which regulates senior care homes, quickly concluded the federal data was most likely wrong. Officials believed one facility had reported staff deaths in error and were busy trying to figure out which one.
Robison Jewish Health Center is a rehabilitation center, designed for people recovering from surgeries, strokes and other serious and sudden health problems. The home is licensed for 88 beds.
Mattox said she learned of the mistake she made not from state officials but from the industry’s main trade association in the state – the Oregon Health Care Association.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published all the nursing home data Thursday, with the names of facilities along with the number of deaths and cases they each reported. About half an hour after the data went live, the trade association called and told Mattox the statistics showed that eight workers from Robison’s nursing home had died of the coronavirus.
She immediately went back into the data system to fix her error, she said.
Most likely she made the error by plugging in the same information for staff deaths as she did for suspected staff cases, Mattox said. Eight workers were tested for the coronavirus, she said, the same number she accidentally typed in for the number of deaths.
Data Specialist David Cansler contributed to this report.
-- Fedor Zarkhin
desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin