Nursing homes were required to submit their plan last Wednesday. Failure to follow the testing minimums means they could face fines of $2,000 per incident, $10,000 for a second offense, and even revocation of their state license.
"I think it could be realistic if we had different time constraints," Christopher Koenig, President of Niagara Lutheran Health Systems, the organization that operates The Greenfields in Lancaster, said. "The mandate didn't leave us much time to go out and find testing ourselves. In addition to that, obviously everybody is having some financial difficulties to figure out how we're going to pay for it."
Bristol Homes and Bristol Villages will need to conduct "at least 1,000" tests, according to Koenig. Koenig also said that insurance companies won't foot the bill because it's an "occupational health issue" and not an "employee health issue".
There are free testing sites that are operated by the state and county. However, Helbringer worried that there would be long lines for their employees and that they would have to pay their employees on what is supposed to be their day off because they needed to get the test.
Governor Cuomo has defended his stance on nursing homes and the testing requirements.
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The governor said that there is enough capacity to meet this demand.
Melissa DeRosa, one of Governor Cuomo's top aides, said there is a plan for the state to expand testing in nursing homes thanks to private labs like BioReference, Quest Laboratories, and LabCorp.
"The state has reserved 30,000 tests per day to be dedicated just to nursing home staff," DeRosa said Friday. "So that's 210,000 tests a week that will just be dedicated to go to the nursing home issue."
Koenig said he was worried that some of the providers they scrambled to partner with will be unable to follow through with the sudden demand for testing from nursing homes.
"They may say they can do it and we don't know," Koenig said. "There's no references to go by to see if they're legitimate or if they can actually meet the need. Sometimes I wonder that if Quest Diagnostics can't meet the need or the large hospital systems, how are some of these smaller guys that say they can do it, can do it. It's a full-time job for a few of the executives here to vet these guys and see what we can do."
