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* Hannah Meisel at the Daily Line…
After granting the troubled nursing home industry legal immunity through an executive order last month, Gov. JB Pritzker backtracked slightly and ordered that the industry can only be protected from civil liability lawsuits involving Covid-19.
On Wednesday, Pritzker eased the extension of an April order to include nursing homes in an executive order granting immunity for hospitals from lawsuits for the duration of the Covid-19 crisis. Nursing home reform advocates blasted the governor, saying he was protecting an industry rife with elderly abuse.
“To give an industry with a long history of neglect, abuse, poor staffing, poor infection control and non-preparedness for a situation like this…is a very bad idea,” said Steve Levin, a Chicago attorney who specializes in cases involving elder abuse. “It’s essentially giving them a get-out-of-jail free pass for past and current misconduct.”
Those protections now only apply to cases involving the diagnosis, treatment and transmission of Covid-19. Additionally, protections are only available to facilities that provide widespread testing of residents and staff at the homes.
Ann Spillane, Pritzker’s chief legal counsel, denied the original order was about protecting the nursing home industry from legal trouble. She suggested it was intended to address deaths that were likely to occur in facilities that were not originally designed or equipped to handle outbreaks the size of a pandemic.
“We’re asking them to go outside their normal comfort zone,’” Spillane said.
She added that, in April, there was a real danger of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities not accepting Covid-19-positive patients out of fear of liability, a situation that may have overwhelmed nearby hospitals.
However, advocates for nursing home reform say extensions should never have been extended to nursing homes in the first place, especially given the industry’s troubled reputation over many years.
posted by Rich Miller
Friday, May 15, 20 @ 10:06 am
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Previous Post: Today’s heroes: The 120 union workers literally living at their jobs while caring for developmentally disabled people
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glad to see Pritzker recognized and correct a mistake. While many GOP’ers would love to give blanket immunity from liability to businesses with their employees as well as customers
Comment by truthteller Friday, May 15, 20 @ 10:22 am
Is the EO posted?
Comment by Waffle fries Friday, May 15, 20 @ 10:34 am
==extensions should never have been extended to nursing homes in the first place, especially given the industry’s troubled reputation over many years.==
Has there ever been a time when the nursing home industry didn’t have a troubled reputation?
Comment by City Zen Friday, May 15, 20 @ 10:43 am
Lets use this as a chance to increase patient protections, focus on protocols, this is the #1 area where resources should be sent. I get the order, makes sense, seeing a lot of PI nursing home ads during the news so the sharks are circling. But frankly, we should care most about turning these places into much safer facilities. How about no shared rooms? How about figuring out how to safely allow for visitations? I have no idea how to make that happen, but we can’t just leave the elderly isolated and locked up like in prison either.
Comment by 44th Friday, May 15, 20 @ 11:19 am
“protections are only available to facilities that provide widespread testing of residents and staff at the homes.”
This is a vitally important requirement.
– MrJM
Comment by @misterjayem Friday, May 15, 20 @ 11:24 am
So, basically, the nursing homes are saying that they don’t want to have to do widespread testing. Which, you know, is arguably the most important piece of slowing down the transmission of COVID on congregate settings.
Cool, cool.
Comment by SaulGoodman Friday, May 15, 20 @ 12:26 pm