COFAR blog

The Boston Globe has recently been reporting that the Baker administration is withholding COVID-19 testing information from the public regarding nursing homes and other congregate care facilities.

Unfortunately, the Globe has repeatedly failed to mention that these “other congregate care facilities” include group homes and developmental centers in the Department of Developmental Services (DDS) system.

But a Globe editorial on Monday, (October 12) confirms our own reporting about the lack of public information from the Baker administration about COVID testing.

As the editorial stated:

…it’s worrisome that the Baker administration has provided only partial access to important COVID infection data in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, even after the governor signed a law to enhance data reporting.

We have been posting for months about this issue as it relates to the DDS system. Our latest post on October 7 discloses that the administration’s online Weekly State Facility reports do not contain any COVID testing data on what may be more than 25,000 staff working in provider-operated group homes.

Further, as we reported, there is no information listed in the weekly reports on the numbers of deaths of staff working in any type of DDS setting. Data provided by DDS in June showed that anywhere from 3 to 15 staff members in group homes had died of COVID-19 as of the end of that month.

In addition to the missing staff data in the weekly reports, the positive test numbers for residents of DDS facilities are not cumulative, and there are no exact numbers given when there are less than 5 deaths or positive cases in any category in a given week.

Globe finds similar lack of data

With regard to nursing homes, the Globe has found many of the same information problems that we have disclosed with regard to DDS. The Globe reported last month that the administration is providing ranges of numbers rather than exact numbers on nursing home residents testing positive; and the newspaper said there is no cumulative testing data in the administration’s reporting on certain assisted living facilities.

MassLive reported on October 1 that no data is published by the administration, as required by a new public reporting law, on whether people who tested positive for COVID-19 have a disability.

Administration strategy to withhold COVID information

Given our findings and the reporting by the Globe and MassLive, it appears withholding COVID-related information is a deliberate strategy by the administration.

In early August, we reported that internal emails in June among the Baker administration’s top human services administrators revealed an apparent consensus to reduce public reporting of COVID-19 test results in congregate care facilities.

That consensus appears to have led to decisions to stop publicly reporting cumulative COVID testing data, and not to report test data on DDS provider staff working in group homes. For reasons that are unclear to us, the administration publicly reports only the number of staff testing positive in state-run group homes.

In one email, a senior manager at MassHealth appears to have wanted to “sunset” congregate care reporting in general. That was apparently just as Governor Baker was signing legislation into law that would increase reporting requirements about COVID-19 infection rates in congregate care facilities.

Lack of compliance with Public Records Law

It’s not clear whether the Globe or any other state media outlet followed up on our reporting on those internal emails.

However, the Globe did file its own public records requests in June for internal emails on COVID testing; and, like us, they’ve gotten little information. The Monday editorial stated that the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) was not complying with orders from the Public Records Supervisor to release the records to the Globe.

We have also reported that the administration has not complied with orders by the Public Records Supervisor to provide us with records or responses to numerous public records requests regarding COVID testing in the DDS system.

Meanwhile, our repeated requests over the past six months to Health and Human Services Secretary Mary Lou Sudders for information about the administration’s response to the virus have all been ignored.

Globe calls for accountability, but the newspaper itself has a blind spot

In its editorial, the Globe gave Governor Baker credit for bringing the pandemic “more or less under control in the state.” But the newspaper maintained that, “we can’t afford any more blind spots. The public needs to keep a close eye on the trends — and hold the state accountable when required.”

We agree that the administration’s lack of adequate public reporting on the COVID crisis shows it is failing to hold itself accountable for its response to the crisis. We hope that changes.

Yet the Globe and the rest of the media in Massachusetts have their own blind spot in that they appear to be largely uninterested in issues facing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the state.

We hope that the administration finally ends its circle-the-wagons approach when it comes to providing information and relevant data about the COVID crisis.

At the same time, we hope both the administration and the media will stop treating people in the DDS system as an afterthought at best, particularly with regard to the pandemic.