As the coronavirus surges again, it is especially dangerous for people in nursing homes caring for more Black and Latino residents, according to a new analysis from the California Health Care Foundation.
Researchers found that skilled nursing facilities with a greater share of Black and Latino residents had higher rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths â and that disparity is growing.
âWe asked [our] advisory group, how do you explain this disparity?â said Dr. Bruce Spurlock, executive director of Cal Hospital Compare, and a study co-author. âAnd nobody really knows. And that’s kind of the part that we really need to figure out.â
Skilled nursing facilities have borne much of the weight of the pandemic. More than one quarter of reported COVID-related deaths in California have happened in nursing homes, even though their residents make up less than half a percent of the stateâs population.
Beyond demographics, the new study analyzed state and federal data about ownership status, size, type of patient, staffing levels and geography to identify factors associated with the hardest-hit nursing homes.
And those factors changed as the pandemic wore on. Back in May, âyou could tell that the larger the facility, the for-profit facilities, were doing worse than the smaller and nonprofit facilities,â Spurlock said.
By late summer, he said, facilities struggling to control the virus were in counties with high COVID-19 rates.
âAge, gender, race and ethnicity were a much bigger predictor of who was doing worse in the August time frame,â Spurlock said.
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âMolly Peterson (@Mollydacious) and Lisa Pickoff-White (@pickoffwhite)
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