The Metrics Matter: Improving Comparisons of COVID-19 Outbreaks in Nursing Homes.

In the United States, nursing facility residents comprise less than 1% of the population but over 40% of deaths due to COVID-19. Mitigating the enormous risk of COVID-19 to nursing home residents requires adequate data. The widely used CMS COVID-19 Nursing Home Dataset contains two derived statistics: Total Resident Confirmed COVID-19 Cases per 1,000 Residents and Total Resident COVID-19 Deaths per 1,000 Residents. These metrics provide a misleading picture, as facilities report cumulative counts of cases and deaths over different time periods but use a point-in-time measure as proxy for number of residents (number of occupied beds in a week), resulting in inflated statistics.
Source: Journal of the American Medical Directors Association - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Original Study - Brief Report Source Type: research