Pennsylvania state senator calls for resignation of Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine

A state senator from Franklin County has called for the immediate resignation of Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine, saying her actions were a major factor in the large number of covid-19 cases and deaths in the state’s nursing homes.

Sen. Doug Mastriano, a first-term Republican representing Franklin, Adams and a part of York counties, said Levine has committed the equivalent of policy malpractice in her handling of the coronavirus pandemic, specifically in her handling of the virus’s spread through nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

Mastriano specifically targeted Levine for a policy which called for nursing home and long-term care patients who had been hospitalized after testing positive for covid-19 to be returned to their homes when they were ready for release from hospitals. Mastriano said that contributed to major outbreaks in numerous nursing homes around the state.

“Our secretary of health, Dr. Levine, decided that it would be good to allow covid-positive patients to be returned to elder-care facitlies. And as a result of that, it broke out like fire,” Mastriano said during a Monday rally with constituents at the base of the Capitol steps.

“The very same people our secretary of health said were going to be vulnerable … It unleashed heck upon our dearly beloved fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles. I think that’s unconscionable, unacceptable, and that secretary needs to be held accountable for that awful decision,” Mastriano said.

Wolf made clear Monday morning that he is firmly in Levine’s corner.

“Dr. Levine has done a phenomenal job of making sure that we do what we need to do in keeping Pennsylvanians safe,” Wolf said. “I think it’s a tribute to her that Pennsylvania has actually done a better job than many of our surrounding states in terms of the infection rate and the death rate.”

Mastriano also blasted Levine for what he called the department’s poor response to the outbreaks in homes once it had become apparent they were one of the epicenters of the problem in Pennsylvania.

To date, state figures show that nursing homes residents have accounted for 2,529 of the state’s 3,707 reported covid-19 deaths. That is a pattern that has been echoed in most states across the country, however.

In a policy guidance issued in March, the Health Department stated, in part:

“Nursing care facilities must continue to accept new admissions and receive readmissions for current residents who have been discharged from the hospital who are stable to alleviate the increasing burden in the acute care settings. This may include stable patients who have had the covid-19 virus.”

Health Department Press Secretary Nate Wardle said there were valid reasons for that policy and challenged Mastriano’s interpretation of the data.

In most cases, Wardle said, individuals being readmitted to a long-term care facility from the hospital with covid-19 would be those who would have had covid-19 before they were sent to the hospital,. In these cases, the readmitted resident would not be introducing it to the facility, if they already had covid-19 and needed more acute care at the hospital.

There were other cases, Wardle noted, in which persons with covid-19 needed continuing care, but no longer hospital care, and was placed in a a long-term care facility that had bed space to ease capacity in the hospitals.

It was not immediately clear how often that happened, or if it was a direct cause of some of the worst outbreaks at long-term care facilities in the state.