HARRISBURG, Pa. — Some Pennsylvania nursing homes are struggling to meet the state’s July 24 deadline to test all residents and staff for COVID-19. On June 8, the Wolf Administration issued a universal testing order for all nursing homes.
Some facilities have yet to report any data nearly a month into the process. Many providers claim they are scrambling to find testing supplies.
“Many providers have had to go out of state—states like New Jersey or North Carolina, Virginia or Florida—because the lab capacity simply doesn’t exist or processes aren’t in place yet here in Pennsylvania,” said Zach Shamberg, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association (PHCA).
PHCA represents more than 400 long-term care providers across the state, including 200 nursing homes. The organization said many of its members have reported significant barriers in accessing tests and obtaining timely results.
“On average here in Pennsylvania, labs are taking about three to five days to produce results for providers, for staff and for residents. Unfortunately, in that time, someone who may have tested negative could test positive, could have false positives, false negatives and we’re fighting for rapid testing,” Shamberg explained.
Pennsylvania’s Health Secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, said accurate, rapid tests are still in development at the federal level. In late March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a rapid point-of-care COVID-19 test for healthcare workers.
The tests are able to provide results within 15 to 20 minutes and are being used in some Pennsylvania hospitals. The FDA has since issued an alert about the accuracy of those tests, stating they may give false negative results.
On June 26, the Department of Health expanded the COVID-19 testing order to include personal care homes, assisted living communities and intermediate care facilities. They are required to complete a baseline universal test for all residents and staff no later than August 31.
The American Health Care Association (AHCA) surveyed 1,385 staff members in long-term care facilities nationwide. They found nearly half of nursing homes and assisted living communities surveyed said the time labs are taking to process COVID-19 tests of residents and staff has become a major barrier and many are still having problems with finding labs to process test results.
More than one third of members surveyed said the cost of testing staff is another barrier and one-out-of-five reported a lack of state and local government support remains a key issue.
The delay of COVID-19 testing has far-reaching impacts. Testing will ultimately determine when families can finally visit their loved ones in nursing or personal care homes. A facility must not have any new outbreaks of COVID-19 over a two-week period in order to reopen for visitors.
“To reopen, the state has mandated that providers do testing and that there are no COVID-positives,” Shamberg added. “It could still be weeks before we’re allowed to reopen visitation. We need to do that here in Pennsylvania and we need to do it as soon as possible.”