Robert Gebeloff, Danielle Ivory, Matt Richtel, Mitch Smith, Karen Yourish, Scott Dance , Jackie Fortiér , Elly Yu, and Molly Parker.
Abstract
Objective
To characterize the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on U.S. nursing homes using Nursing Home Compare, medicare.gov; and Brown School of Public Health’s LTCFocus.org data.
Design and Method
Facilities with a population of at least a quarter black and Latino residents were compared to facilities with less than 5% black and Latino. Only states that provided facility-level data and had outbreaks in at least 20 percent of their nursing homes were included. States that did not have 10 or more homes in each category were excluded. Data as of May 16, 2020 were used in this paper.
Results
Among states that provided facility-level data and had outbreaks, more than 60 percent of nursing homes where at least a quarter of the residents were black or Latino reported double the rate of coronavirus cases than those where black and Latino people made up less than 5 percent of the population. A racial disparity remained even after accounting for a variety of factors, including the size of a nursing home, the infection rate in the surrounding county, the population density of the neighborhood, and how many residents had Medicaid or Medicare.
Conclusion
The disparity in outbreaks among homes with more Latino and black residents identified in this paper is difficult to explain, represents a snapshot in time, and the picture could change as the crisis wears on.