Levine Pressed For Missing Data
A letter, dated March 16, 2021, to former Pennsylvania Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine from four Republican congressmen (including two from the Pennsylvania Delegation – Lloyd Smucker and Mike Kelly) asks the following questions:
1. What is your response to the Spotlight PA report quoted above regarding missing or
incomplete data in Pennsylvania’s nursing home death data?
2. If you continue to believe that a data lag is to blame for this problem, how do you explain
the fact that nursing homes contacted by Spotlight PA say they have reported data that
still has not shown up in the states data reporting system?
3. If you continue to believe a data lag is to blame, please describe in detail why that is the
case. Please also explain what actions you believe Congress, or the Pennsylvania state
legislature, can take to eliminate these data lags and obtain a full view of the
consequences of Governor Wolf’s nursing home admit or readmit policy.
The Spotlight Report that they refer to was from September of 2020. In that report, Spotlight wrote, “Even now, more than six months after COVID-19 arrived in Pennsylvania, the public still doesn’t have a complete picture of how many people have died or been sickened by the virus inside these vulnerable facilities.
Weekly reports released by the Department of Health are consistently missing data for more than 100 of the state’s 693 nursing homes. In at least one case, those omissions obscured a deadly outbreak from the public. While the specific facilities missing data varies each week, 42 have not shown anything for more than two months. It’s not clear why, week after week, some facilities are still missing the counts.”
Levine was nominated by President Biden to be Assistant Secretary of Health. During one her confirmation hearings she was involved in a testy exhange with Senator Rand Paul, when he questioned her about genital mutilation.