Four years and more than 200,000 deaths later: Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic in US nursing homes

Four years and more than 200,000 deaths later: Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic in US nursing homes
Health Affairs; by R. Tamara Konetzka, David C. Grabowski, Vincent Mor; 7/24
Nursing home residents and staff were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing attention to long-standing challenges of poor infection control, understaffing, and substandard quality of care in many facilities. Evolving practices and policies during the pandemic often focused on these challenges, with little effect. Despite the emergence of best practices to mitigate transmission of the virus, even the highest-quality facilities experienced outbreaks, indicating a larger systemic problem, rather than a quality problem at the facility level. Here we present a narrative review and discussion of the evolution of policies and practices and their effectiveness, drawing on evidence from the United States that was published during 2020–23.