Gov. Wolf Needs to Provide Answers to COVID-19 Response in Nursing Homes

While Lancaster County has made significant efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 and has transitioned to the "green phase" of Governor Tom Wolf's reopening plan, significant questions about how the governor has handled this crisis remain. The people of Pennsylvania deserve answers from Wolf and members of his Administration.

Tragically to date, 4,518 deaths from COVID-19 – 69 percent have occurred in nursing homes and long-term care communities. On March 13, 2020 the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) which are partially responsible for regulating nursing homes and long-term care facilities, released guidance which stated these facilities can admit or readmit patients who have or may have come in contact with COVID-19, but that the facilities must be able to comply with Centers for Disease Control (CDC) quarantining guidance.

Five days later, Wolf and his Administration released guidance requiring nursing care facilities to accept admissions and readmissions for individuals who had COVID-19, regardless of whether or not the facility could properly follow CDC quarantining guidelines.

While this guidance was altered, nearly two months later, during that time, too many of Pennsylvania's seniors became ill or lost their lives to COVID-19.

We have since learned that 45 states across the nation took the opposite action—by not requiring nursing home and long term care facilities to admit COVID-19 positive patients, unless they were able to follow CDC quarantining guidelines as CMS's guidance stated.

Wolf and his Administration have made no effort to be transparent about their decision-making or metrics. He kept the Open Records offices for state agencies shut down, while our county governments continued to operate them and selectively answered questions from the media at their limited press conferences. His Administration has failed to respond to letters from my congressional colleagues from Pennsylvania, including responding to my own requests about their wrongful claim about the use of CDC guidance on the reopening metrics they've used to keep counties on lockdown for weeks.

At the same time the Pennsylvania Department of Health was enforcing this order to require nursing homes and long-term care facilities to accept patients with COVID-19, the Secretary of Health, Dr. Rachel Levine had her mother removed from a personal care home and checked into a hotel. What message did that send to the public?

Now, Wolf and his Administration are choosing to ignore my colleagues who are members of the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. The Committee, led by Republican Ranking Member Steve Scalise, sent a letter to Wolf asking for answers to these questions, but it appears as though silence is now Wolf's chief response to inquiries.

Last week, I joined other Pennsylvanian Republican Congressmen and members of the Select Subcommittee, in calling for state Attorney General Josh Shapiro to investigate how and why Wolf and his Administration came to their decision to enforce their order against CMS guidance. Six tenths of one percent of Pennsylvania's population lives in nursing homes or long-term care communities, but tragically represent 68 percent of deaths and the people of Pennsylvania deserve an answer.