New York Governor Andrew Cuomo became the national face of specific information when COVID-19 hit, offering daily briefings that were fluid as the pandemic data kept shifting. As the deaths of nursing home patients across the US and in New York quickly became the most prominent fatality statistic, Cuomo’s administration focused on numerous watchdog groups and lawmakers who wanted precise numbers of nursing home fatalities.

But nursing home fatality numbers were spiraling higher and higher in nursing homes, exacerbated by Cuomo’s controversial March 25, 2020, order to bring infected COVID-19 patients to nursing homes during the early months of the pandemic. The state later revoked this mandate on May 10, 2020.

Bill Hammond, the senior fellow for health policy of non-profit Empire Center for Public Policy, said they sued Cuomo’s administration via the New York Department of Health (DOH) for the public release of statistics on all nursing home residents’ deaths. Hammond had requested official data on nursing home fatalities plus specific death tolls during the March 25 mandate to bring COVID-19 patients to nursing homes for six months with no official answers.

Last week, New York Attorney General Letitia James released a damming report about nursing home COVID-19 deaths. The seventy-six-page document stated New York nursing home deaths due to COVID-19, according to James, were most likely fifty percent higher than Cuomo officials claimed earlier since many patients died in hospitals.

In response to the new report, New York Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said the nursing home death toll was about 50 percent higher than originally stated.

James said over twenty nursing homes underreported deaths and did not enforce required infection policies in the report.

The report shares information that about 4,000 residents died after the March 25 Cuomo administration mandate that sent medically stable COVID-19 patients to New York nursing homes. James noted this “may have put residents at increased risk of harm in some facilities.”

Hammond said the report is not surprising to him and is an “independent confirmation of a lot of the concerns and criticisms that have been raised. It highlights major discrepancies in the reporting on deaths and makes clear that state policy and oversight of nursing homes was at least one factor in the tragic loss of life.”

Albany Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor ruled in a sixteen-page decision last week that the months-long stalling of sharing accurate nursing home deaths’ data is a clear violation of the Freedom of Information Law.

O’Conner criticized the New York DOH for stalling the Empire Center for Public Policy as the organization repeatedly requested nursing home death data over six months.

O’Connor wrote, “DOH does not, in the Court’s opinion, offer an adequate explanation as to why it has not responded to that request within its estimated time period or to date. Its continued failure to provide petitioner a response, given the straightforward nature of the request goes against FOIL’s broad standard of open and transparent government and is a violation of that statute.”

Currently, the new DOH death toll for nursing home patients stands at 13,197, with about one-third dying in hospitals.

A new bill backed by New York legislators, if passed, would require the DOH to report all nursing home deaths, including those patients who die in a hospital.