![]() Thirteen Monroe County nursing homes are included in the state's downloadable database. State health commissioner Kristina Box issued an order June 1 requiring long-term care facilities, jails, prisons and other “congregate housing facilities” to report positive test results and COVID-19-related deaths (or suspected deaths) in their buildings within 24 hours. A public relations officer replied and said private labs may have longer turnaround times for positive cases and deaths. In June, The Herald-Times emailed the state’s Joint Information Center to ask why the new cases at the southside nursing home did not seem to be included in local data. However, if any residents or staff tested had permanent addresses outside of Monroe County, they could be listed in other counties on the state dashboard. Because the state only lists 84 specimens collected on that date, it appears that those tests may be missing from the overall count. It’s unclear whether the 103 COVID-19 infections listed in the state’s database for GLC Bloomington are also counted in the overall numbers. A Capstone representative confirmed in June that the specimens collected May 13 at the Bloomington building had been processed and reported to the state by faxing them to a designated number. Samples were sent to Capstone Healthcare LLC, a private lab in Atlanta, Georgia. On that date, according to Rogers, GLC’s Bloomington facility tested all of its residents - about 130 people. ![]() ![]() According to an email from a Joint Information Center representative, the date on the dashboard refers to the date the swab was collected. For example, a graph titled “Monroe County Tests by Day” on the state’s dashboard lists 84 specimens collected on May 13. Long-term care data is provided by the facilities themselves, and it does not necessarily directly match the daily numbers being posted on the state’s online dashboard. Indiana’s Joint Information Center did not respond to an email asking about the error by the deadline for this story. “We strive to keep our COVID-19 status updated and publicly available on our website so that anyone can quickly access information, including state or federal agencies that may need to address any issues tracking, managing or reporting data within their systems.” “Our commitment is to remain open and transparent,” he said. Rogers said they were contacted by state health department representatives who said the state did in fact receive the data on time for all 23 centers. Since then, ISDH has updated its database to include data from those 23 facilities. “When the ISDH database was made public, we learned that their records reflected that our facility data was not captured, so we worked diligently with the long-term care director and ISDH to determine why this error occurred,” Rogers said in the statement. However, he said, on July 21, some if its facilities were notified that their data had not been submitted. Wesley Rogers, president of Golden LivingCenters - Indiana, said in an emailed statement that GLC had submitted its data to the state by the July 14 deadline using a multi-facility form provided by the state. Initially, the listings for Golden LivingCenters, which has a facility in Bloomington, were labeled as “facility has not submitted data.” Since June, the company has posted updates about its cases on its website before that, it was provided privately to residents and authorized resident contacts. It also has a column for resident deaths, most of which are zero, and a column for staff deaths, which is entirely blank. Values of fewer than five are not enumerated. Thirty-six facilities are labeled as “facility has not submitted data.” Another 267 have submitted data, but have no cases listed. The database lists 459 Indiana facilities that have had cases. Unlike the overall daily numbers for cases, testing and deaths statewide - which report cases by the patient’s county of residence - the long-term care database lists cases and deaths by the facility where the COVID-19 patient lives or works. Its past cases, however, do account for a rise in Greene County cases on the ISDH dashboard map earlier this year. But Glenburn Home isn’t included in the state’s database. A May 29 report from the administrator, Jean Johanningsmeier, said 71 residents had recovered from COVID-19 and 22 had died. In Greene County, for example, Linton’s Glenburn Home began posting its numbers daily on its Facebook page. That data has since been updated, but is still incomplete. ![]() Earlier this month, the Indiana State Department of Health released site-specific data for COVID-19 cases at long-term senior care facilities in the state.
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