LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Michigan officials repeatedly assured the public they were tracking nursing home deaths carefully. But newly obtained documents being examined suggest something closer to a group project where nobody did the math.
When the death count depends on who’s guessing.
According to about 15,000 pages of documents obtained by journalist Charlie LeDuff and reported by Michigan Enjoyer, the Whitmer administration struggled to produce reliable data on COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities during the early months of the pandemic.
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Federal guidelines required states to count nursing home residents who died in hospitals as part of the facility death toll but internal spreadsheets reportedly show Michigan officials repeatedly generating conflicting numbers while many facilities had not even reported data to them at all. LeDuff also reports that the original nursing home reports have since been deleted.
At one point in June 2020, the state’s internal tally listed just 99 deaths – after some hospital deaths were removed – while nursing homes themselves had reported 255 deaths. Eventually, state officials asked facilities to submit a simple self-reported number without detailed information like names or dates of death.
A study built on questionable data.
Later in 2020, a report from the Center for Health and Research Transformation (CHRT), which is a consulting firm affiliated with the University of Michigan, suggested Michigan’s nursing home death rate was lower than the national average. But critics say the study relied heavily on incomplete state data.
Additionally, it’s interesting to note that the CHRT study was funded by the Michigan Health Endowment, a nonprofit established by the state and governed by a nine-member board appointed by the governor.
Auditor raises red flags.
In 2022, Michigan’s Auditor General found the number of long-term care deaths during the first 17 months of the pandemic was 42% higher than what the state had reported publicly, contradicting the CHRT’s findings. In their report, the Auditor General counted at least 8,061 deaths in the period of March 2020 through July 2021. Michigan stopped counting the numbers all together by May of 2022.
What the governor said.
Whitmer has said the state did their “best” to make decisions with “very little or very bad information” but critics say the bigger issue may be that Michigan never bothered to collect truthful information in the first place.
The investigation is ongoing, according to Michigan Enjoyer, as they continue examining thousands of additional documents that may shed further light on how Michigan tracked – or failed to track – nursing home deaths during the pandemic.
