OHCA 2020 Oregon Long Term Care State Report

2020 Oregon Long Term Care State Report www.ohca.com 9 Impacts of COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic has upended all aspects of society throughout the world. COVID-19 has impacted long term care providers, workers, and residents particularly hard. Older people and individuals living with underlying health conditions—such as those living in long term care settings—are at the highest risk of experiencing complications, hospitalization, and death as a result of COVID-19. Unfortunately, current data shows that people aged 85-years-old and older who are COVID-19 positive have a shockingly higher risk of death—630 times higher—from the virus than people aged 19–29 years old. 10 Much remains to be learned about COVID-19. However, experts have repeatedly found that the number of COVID-19 cases in long term care settings appears to be closely tied to location, specifically locations where a COVID-19 outbreak first occurred in the wider community that a licensed facility is located. 11 As David Grabowski, Ph.D., a health care policy expert from Harvard Medical School, notes, “It’s about where you are and not who you are.” This underscores the uncertainty and significant challenges that providers have faced in battling the pandemic. Particularly, asymptomatic spread is a challenge for providers who, especially early on, lacked the necessary testing and personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep asymptomatic staff or residents from starting an outbreak. Financial Impacts While the complete picture of how COVID-19 will impact the long term care sector continues to develop, it is clear that the costs of providing care have increased substantially. This is particularly true for PPE, which is vital to protecting long term care residents, caregivers, and staff from COVID-19. The demand for PPE across the health care sector (and other sectors) has driven up costs of PPE for long term care providers, and infection prevention protocols have required providers to use far more PPE than would normally be used in the provision of care. In fact, the Society for Healthcare Organization Procurement Professionals reports that the daily costs of masks, gloves, and gowns increased by 1,064%, on average, since the pandemic began. 12 The per unit costs of gowns increased by 2,000% and 3M N95 masks costs increased by an astonishing 6,136%. 13 Overall, the total daily average cost for PPE for a facility went from $35 pre-COVID to $2,510.25 per day during the pandemic. Providers must have the necessary equipment to keep their staff and residents safe, and investments must be made to ensure they have the resources to do so. In addition to PPE being a huge cost driver for providers during the pandemic, providers have dealt with extensive increases in costs to labor and testing. Many facilities in Oregon have offered hazard pay, bonuses, and other incentives to their workers during the pandemic both to reward them for their extraordinary efforts to go above and beyond to serve residents during this time and to retain existing caregivers and staff. On the testing front, the State of Oregon has generously allocated funds to providers to cover state requirements for baseline testing and ongoing testing of staff. However, many providers have offered testing to staff and residents outside of these requirements and are bearing the cost of these extra safety measures. 6,136% Cost Increase for 3M N95 Masks 2,000% Cost Increase for Gowns PPE Costs Have Increased Dramatically Since March 2020