One of our earliest COVID podcasts with Jim Wright and David Grabowski a year ago addressed the early devastating impact of COVID on nursing homes. 

One year ago Mike Wasserman, geriatrician and immediate past president of the California Long Term Care Association, said we’d have a quarter million deaths in long term care.  A quarter of a million deaths.  No one would publish that quote - it seemed inconceivable to many at the time.  And now, here we are, and the numbers are going to be close.

In this podcast we look back on where we’ve been over the last year, where we are now, and what’s ahead.

One theme that runs through the podcast is that if this level of death, confinement, and fear occured to any other population, change would have been swift.  But nursing home residents, for the most part, don’t have a voice, they’re not able to speak up, they lack power to move politicians and policy.  

Mike Wasserman is a provocateur.  He is a needed voice for the nursing home residents and the nursing home staff who often are not able to speak for themselves.  He is regularly quoted in major news outlets, and was in the Washington Post about opening up nursing homes to visitation the day of our podcast.  If you don’t follow him on Twitter @Wassdoc you should!

-Link to Wassmerm and Grabowski’s article in the Health Affairs blog on the need for financial transparency in nursing homes.

-Link to webinar about what to do about COVID in long term care from April 2020

-@AlexSmithMD