AARP fought for public reporting of nursing home COVID-19 cases and deaths. Using this data, the AARP Public Policy Institute, in collaboration with the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in Ohio, created the AARP Nursing Home COVID-19 Dashboard to provide four-week snapshots of the infiltration of the virus into nursing homes and its impact on residents and staff, with the goal of identifying specific areas of concern at the national and state levels in a timely manner.
The first dashboard aggregates and analyzes self-reported data from nursing homes available from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), covering the time frame of Aug. 24 to Sept. 20, 2020, and contains five key measures. It is specific to nursing homes:
- Resident deaths per 100 residents
- Resident cases per 100 residents
- Staff cases per 100 residents
- Percentage of nursing homes without a one-week supply of PPE
- Percentage of nursing homes with staffing shortages
The dashboard will be updated every four weeks to track trends over time and will evolve to include more categories to follow other measures of interest.