Virginia Injury News
Earlier this year, the coronavirus pandemic took the country by storm, quickly spreading from what was just a few select cities to every state in the nation. One of the first clusters of COVID-19 cases was in a Washington state nursing home, where at least 37 residents died as a result of the virus. Indeed, among those most at risk for developing serious and potentially fatal coronavirus symptoms are those living in Virginia nursing homes. Currently, several states have banned friends and family members from visiting loved ones in nursing homes in an attempt to stop – or at least – slow the spread of COVID-19.
However, at a time when one may think that nursing home regulations would be getting stricter, the opposite seems to be the case. According to a recent news report by the New York Times, the current administration has been working to relax the regulations that control the country’s nursing homes. Shockingly, this even includes measures designed to combat the spread of deadly infections between residents.
Last July, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a plan that would, among other things, relieve nursing homes from complying with an Obama-era rule requiring facilities to employ at least one specialist with knowledge of preventing infections. Under the proposed rule, facilities would no longer need even a part-time infection disease specialist, and instead would require such a specialist to spend “sufficient time at the facility.”