Copyright © 2020 Albuquerque Journal
A federal nursing home comparison website shows some of the more than 30 facilities with COVID-19 cases in New Mexico have five-star ratings. Others have less glowing grades.
Six nursing homes with reported coronavirus deaths have one thing in common: inspectors found all had a history of lacking infection prevention and control programs, the Medicare.gov website showed. The five other New Mexico facilities with deaths weren’t listed or were too new to rate.
As of Friday, more than half the 79 deaths in New Mexico senior care facilities occurred in the Farmington area.
The Life Care Center of Farmington, which had the highest number of reported positives and 31 deaths, has a four-star above-average rating, according to the nursing home compare website.
In Albuquerque, Advanced Health Care, which had 18 patients with the coronavirus, 23 staff and four deaths, received the highest rating, of five stars, according to federal data.
Uptown Genesis in Albuquerque, rated as average with three stars, reported 63 patients with COVID-19, 36 staff positives and eight deaths.
The toll at La Vida Llena medical unit in Albuquerque: 44 COVID-19 positive patients, 29 staff and 17 deaths. The facility is rated five stars on the Medicare.gov website.
The state Attorney General’s Office has launched an investigation into alleged failures by La Vida Llena officials to “take reasonable precautions necessary to prevent damage to the health and safety of its residents in the wake of knowledge of the Governor’s Orders and COVID-19 infections within that facility.”
Attorney Grant Woods told the Journal last week La Vida Llena representatives are helping AG’s officials “get the full picture rather than a partial picture.” Most importantly, Woods said, “is that everybody has worked with the appropriate entity, which is the Department of Health, to deal with this situation.”
Lori Mayer is a spokeswoman for Genesis Healthcare, a national firm that has 10 long-term care facilities in the Albuquerque area.
“We take infection control very seriously. If the virus does get in, it does not discriminate: It impacts five-star and one-star buildings alike.”
Albuquerque attorney David Fine said he’s received phone calls from family members of COVID-19 patients who have died. But he said actual negligence has to be shown for a legal claim. “It comes down to what reasonable nursing facilities should have known,” he said, “and were they following the laws and order that were in place?”
