Misleading MD COVID nursing home data: Contact your local officials and ask for data transparency

[Anonymous]

Since nursing home data is updated on Wednesdays at 10am, I went to look at the updated numbers. Somehow MoCo went from having 381 nursing home resident deaths to 323. How is that possible?

Well, it turns out they remove data for facilities that haven’t had cases or deaths in the last 14 days. That’s hidden in a note under the chart. So there’s no way to find the total cases/deaths in nursing homes for the state.

Contact your local officials about this. It’s really important for everyone to see the toll this pandemic is having on nursing homes. Obfuscating the data like this is unacceptable.

https://coronavirus.maryland.gov/pages/hcf-resources

[Anonymous]

I don't see 381 anywhere

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't see 381 anywhere

That’s because they took off data for facilities that haven’t had cases or deaths in 14 days, so they are only reporting data from facilities with “active outbreaks.”

So there’s no way to see the actual total number of cases and deaths in nursing homes.

[Anonymous]

You are right. They did remove a lot of them. All should be shared. They removed the one we were at and was terrible and not a surprise they had a high number of cases.

[Anonymous]

File a Public Information Act request. It's a pretty narrow request, so it should be free.

They might claim it's protected, although the exclusion allowed by GP § 4-306 seems to only apply to the records from a hospital, and not consolidated statistics for the state.

[Anonymous]

That’s terrible, because it lulls people into a false sense of security. WaPo needs to investigate.

[Anonymous]

See if you can find it on waybackmachine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:File a Public Information Act request. It's a pretty narrow request, so it should be free.

They might claim it's protected, although the exclusion allowed by GP § 4-306 seems to only apply to the records from a hospital, and not consolidated statistics for the state.

Thanks! I just filed the request. They shouldn’t be able to claim it’s protected, since it’s the same data they are publishing on the website, just without the exclusion of data from facilities without “active outbreaks.”

[Anonymous]

Are you sure the cumulative stats aren't kept somewhere?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you sure the cumulative stats aren't kept somewhere?

I can’t find it anywhere on the website.

Hogan’s spokesman confirmed for me yesterday that the facilities without active outbreaks are removed, but when I asked him to publish the cumulative totals, he did not reply.

[Anonymous]

The Baltimore Sun did an article about this and there is a MD legislative hearing about it today.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/coronavirus/bs-md-nursing-home-data-missing-20200610-5ejskowscvh5hdgiw7s5lf76uy-story.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you sure the cumulative stats aren't kept somewhere?

I can’t find it anywhere on the website.

Hogan’s spokesman confirmed for me yesterday that the facilities without active outbreaks are removed, but when I asked him to publish the cumulative totals, he did not reply.

I think someone can rebuild it based on the GIS data time series; I was going to test it out with Moco as I kept the data for a few. Will post back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you sure the cumulative stats aren't kept somewhere?

I can’t find it anywhere on the website.

Hogan’s spokesman confirmed for me yesterday that the facilities without active outbreaks are removed, but when I asked him to publish the cumulative totals, he did not reply.

I think someone can rebuild it based on the GIS data time series; I was going to test it out with Moco as I kept the data for a few. Will post back.

Let us know! Thanks for doing that!