Nursing Home Violations, and Now Deaths, Highlight COVID-19 Dangers

Health inspectors cited Oklahoma City’s Windsor Hills Nursing Center last November after a certified nursing assistant was seen not washing her hands before, during or after treating five residents with incontinence one morning.

A few months earlier, at Pleasant Valley Health Care Center in Muskogee, an inspector wrote that several staff members and visitors entered the room of a resident who was supposed to be in isolation after contracting a drug-resistant bacterial infection. None was wearing protective gear.

And a year earlier, a certified nursing assistant at Hillcrest Manor Nursing Center in Blackwell pulled coins out of his pocket, used a vending machine and scratched his beard without washing his hands before he gave medicine to several residents, regulators reported.

As nursing homes across Oklahoma lock down to prevent COVID-19 from spreading to their elderly residents, an Oklahoma Watch analysis found that infection control or prevention violations are common at nursing homes in the state, as they are nationwide. Older people are at higher risk of catching the deadly disease.

The risk is being borne out in the growing number of coronavirus cases reported in Oklahoma.

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