When you and your loved one decide it’s time for them to move into a nursing home to get the care they need, you’ll undoubtedly want to find the best facility for them. With so many facilities to choose from, the decision isn’t always easy. When you do pick one, however, you expect the nursing home to provide their residents with outstanding and attentive care.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, more than 80,000 state residents live in more than 700 nursing homes throughout the state. When a nursing home fails to provide the 24-hour, long-term care they are required to provide, a report can be made to ensure the facility is investigated and the residents are safe.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to make headlines worldwide, the total number of cases and related deaths continues to rise in the United States. According to the New York Times, 43% of all coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are linked to nursing homes.

Nursing home residents are among the most vulnerable populations when it comes to the spread of viruses and other illnesses. This is one of the reasons as to why so many facilities were hit hard when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The majority of facilities were not prepared for the outbreak, which has led to a high number of cases and fatalities across the state and nation.

In an attempt to reduce further spread of the coronavirus, the Pennsylvania Department of Health has ordered in-state nursing homes to administer universal COVID-19 testing.

As COVID-19 continues to infect people on a daily basis, scientists, doctors, and researchers are working tirelessly to find ways to treat the virus and develop a vaccine. Nursing home residents are among the most vulnerable population to COVID-19. Across Pennsylvania, tens of thousands of nursing home residents have been infected, which has led some doctors to take drastic and questionable measures when it comes to attempting treatments through biomedical research. Let’s take a look at the risks of performing biomedical research in skilled nursing facilities and what the potential ramifications could be.

While COVID-19 has the potential to infect anyone, the elderly are the most at risk for developing serious complications from the virus. Based on data from Pennsylvania and the federal government, nursing homes have been some of the most affected areas when it comes to the spread of the coronavirus. As a result, hundreds of thousands have been infected and tens of thousands have died. In order to prevent more deaths and prepare for potential future outbreaks, it’s important for nursing homes to look at how they handled the COVID-19 outbreak and determine what needs to happen now.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the entire world and changed the typical day for most Americans. Work-from-home routines, altered grocery store checkout lines, and mask requirements are what many people have been dealing with. For the majority of those who have fallen ill, symptoms have been mild and recovery has been short. But the most vulnerable—particularly those in nursing homes, have been dealing with a far worse situation.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, residents at a top-rated, state-run nursing home for military veterans and their spouses in Chester County have been seriously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a five day period in late April, the death toll nearly tripled. According to the Chester County coroner, 26 residents who tested positive for the coronavirus or were presumed infected have died as of April 24.

Overall, residents at the Southeastern Veterans’ Complex (SEVC) in East Vincent Township have been happy with their care. Loved ones have positively reviewed the facility, which currently has a waiting list. Now, however, it seems the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs (DMVA) that runs the facility may have concealed the severity of the COVID-19 outbreak at the facility.

As COVID-19 spreads throughout Europe, nursing home residents are found to be abandoned at some facilities in Spain. According to NPR, Spain is the second hardest-hit country in Europe by the virus with more than 39,000 confirmed cases and 2,800 deaths as of March 24, 2020. Currently, over a fifth of the nursing homes in the Madrid region have had cases of COVID-19.

On March 23, the Defense Minister Margarita Robles of Spain announced Spanish military finding care home residents abandoned, with some left dead in their beds. It was discovered staff in some centers left after cases of COVID-19 were detected. Residents were left to take care of themselves–including those in serious conditions.

Earlier this month, two Pennsylvania Senators, Pat Toomey (R) and Bob Casey (D), issued a report identifying 478 nursing homes in the nation as having “serious deficiencies.” These facilities in turn were labeled as “special focus facilities” by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This means that the labeled nursing homes have a “documented pattern of poor care” and will be eligible to be improved upon by CMS.

74 of these special focus facilities have guaranteed mortgages provided by a federal agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). These mortgages were insured against default, meaning if the nursing home failed to make payments, their mortgage agreement was still intact. Since they were unable to go into default, some facilities and chains racked up serious debt—in some cases, millions of dollars—to HUD. Not only were some HUD-insured facilities unable to pay their mortgages, but as the Senators’ report showed, they were also unable to pay for proper care for their residents.

The HCR ManorCare nursing home in Pottsville, PA was investigated by state inspectors in 2017. What they found was not the environment of a caring, healthy, and well-run nursing home. Instead, the residents who lived there were severely neglected.

Neglect included failure to maintain resident hygiene, as shown by a disabled man who had long, dirty fingernails. The nursing home didn’t have enough staff to properly respond to the call buttons from the residents’ bedsides. It was common for residents to regularly soil themselves because it took too long for staff to get there to help them go to the bathroom.

There was one instance where a woman, who was dying of uterine cancer, was bruised because she was left on a bedpan for too long. A man was given too many opioids and had to go to the hospital. An unsupervised bus trip with one staff member in charge of six residents who needed aid with walking resulted in a resident flipping backward on a wheelchair ramp and had a brain hemorrhage.