The Loneliness of the Long Term Care Managers

THE IMPACT OF COVID ON NURSING HOMES HAS BEEN STRONG ALL ACROSS EUROPE, ACCORDING TO THE STUDIES OF THE CERGAS LONG TERM CARE OBSERVATORY, COORDINATED BY ELISABETTA NOTARNICOLA

The management of contagion in nursing homes for the elderly in Lombardy (and beyond) was among the most heated topics of debate in the chronicle of the pandemic. The study underway at the CERGAS Long Term Care Observatory coordinated by Elisabetta Notarnicola, Associate Professor of Practice in Government, Health and Not for Profit at SDA also contributes to clarifying what happened or did not happen within these structures.
 
“Our study has two objectives,” explains Notarnicola. "In a first phase, which is already published and will be expanded in the Oasi 2020 report on the state of healthcare companies in Italy to be released in December, we analyzed what happened in the nursing homes in the acute phase of the pandemic. We used data from the Istituto Superiore di Salute related to deaths in the nursing homes during the months of March-May and integrated it with the information obtained from interviews with some directors of the facilities in order to understand what the decisive critical issues and the specificities of the Italian case were.” Contrary to what one can perhaps imagine, the impact of COVID in nursing homes has had similar dramatic effects across Europe in terms of infections and deaths, as the facilities for the elderly are isolated and separate services from hospital and territorial health systems almost everywhere. 
 
“What the managers have more or less unambiguously reported is that they have been left alone in an emergency, without clear indications, without protective equipment and without test swabs,” confirms Professor Notarnicola. “In all nine Italian regions most affected by COVID, the attention of public policies has focused on the hospital network and the first guidelines reached the RSA sector only after March 20, a delay that allowed the virus to spread and which did not give the directors the opportunity to gear up. Only from May onwards did the situation differentiate between the regions, when different policies emerged, such as in Emilia-Romagna where additional public funding was allocated to deal with the emergency.”
 
The second objective and part of the study, which will be part of the Observatory's annual report due out in 2021, adds the considerations derived from the questionnaires addressed to a thousand families and about twenty directors of large groups in the elderly care sector. This time, the long-term effects on the sector and on the credibility of these structures are being investigated. “The first evidence tells us that families have not lost confidence in the nursing homes, but there is a request for renewal especially as regards services so that they can evolve towards better answers", concludes the researcher. “Managers, on the other hand, express fears about the economic and financial sustainability of their companies, considering the huge losses suffered due to the long stop imposed on new entries.”
 
Visit the COVID Crisis Lab website.
 

by Emanuele Elli
Translated by Alex Foti