388 - An Update on COVID-19 In Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care Facilities
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2021
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Across the US, 84% of residents in nursing homes and long-term care facilities are vaccinated for COVID-19, but only 64% of staff. Federal mandates could help but it's unclear when or how those would be enforced and, in the meantime, the industry is already suffering from a severe staffing shortage. Dr. David Grabowski, a health policy researcher and professor at Harvard, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about this largely underpaid and overworked group of people, how vaccine mandates could play out, and what can be done to prevent a staffing and care crisis.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City. |
| 0:20.0 | Our goal is to bring |
| 0:21.7 | scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging interviews |
| 0:27.1 | with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. |
| 0:32.8 | If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jh.h.edu. |
| 0:40.4 | That's public health question at jhhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:46.5 | Today, our subject is nursing homes. I speak with Harvard professor David Grabowski, |
| 0:52.1 | who is worried about worker shortages in the setting |
| 0:56.0 | of low wages, a tight labor market, and vaccine requirements. |
| 1:01.0 | Let's listen. |
| 1:03.0 | David Grabowski, thank you so much for coming back to Public Health on call to talk to us about |
| 1:08.0 | nursing homes and long-term care. I remember your earlier podcast of just about |
| 1:12.6 | the devastation that the pandemic was causing and the need to rethink how we provide care for |
| 1:20.2 | people at the end of life in the United States. So today, the big story right now, I think with nursing homes at least are vaccines. |
| 1:30.5 | How's that going? |
| 1:32.6 | Well, first, Josh, thanks for having me back. |
| 1:35.3 | And yes, vaccines are certainly the issue of the day. |
| 1:39.5 | I think nursing homes are doing, I would give them a sort of an average grade in terms of vaccines. |
| 1:48.1 | It's worth saying that some nursing homes are doing quite well. |
| 1:53.1 | Others are doing, unfortunately, quite poorly. |
| 1:56.5 | So just to give you kind of the national numbers. In terms of residents, things actually look |
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