Half a year into the pandemic, Kansas nursing homes still face uneven access to fast COVID-19 testing through the state’s patchwork of private labs and hospitals. And the prices they pay for it vary widely.
Testing access has dramatically increased in Kansas from its initial slow start. Last month alone, it tested 4% of its population. But that hasn’t guaranteed quick and cheap options for long-term care.
Meanwhile, federal tallies show the virus has reached nursing home residents in about 30 counties, from the state’s most populous to some of its most rural. That’s caused more than half of the state’s coronavirus death toll.
Fifty outbreaks are active in long-term care facilities right now.
Though the state lab in Topeka frequently conducts mass testing of workers and residents from long-term care facilities when those places get hit with outbreaks, its help only stretches so far.
Kansas health secretary Lee Norman last week suggested the state contract with private labs willing to expand their capacity, and connect nursing homes to them.
“That would really speed up the turnaround time on the testing a lot,” he told a state task force.
Swift test results help nursing homes catch cases early, saving lives. They also let homes clear healthy employees faster so they can go back to work. That’s critical because nursing aides are taking on long hours — risking burnout and driving up overtime costs — to cover shifts for colleagues waiting to find out if a sore throat or a cough could be COVID-19.
“You can’t expect that they’re going to do that forever,” said Joe Ewert, CEO of Brewster Place in Topeka. “You just can’t.”
Brewster Place has nurse’s aides working 60 to 70-hour weeks to cover for the three to eight employees out with symptoms at any given time. Most turn out not to have the coronavirus, but checking can take anywhere from 48 hours to a week.
That variation is partly because wait times — for an appointment and then to get test results — differ by week, depending on demand, and by hospital or clinic, for similar reasons. One Brewster employee may go to one hospital for the test, and another may head to a different one.
Across the state, nursing homes’ experiences also depend on what resources their county health departments can offer.
“It’s a little bit odd that we have a million different ways to do it,” Ewert said. “It’s a little bit curious that folks in my profession aren’t basically (all) provided with the same access.”
An hour southeast of Topeka, nursing home employees with symptoms can count on almost immediate results from rapid-testing machines that Lyon County’s health agency acquired amid an outbreak at a meatpacking plant.
Months ago, Ewert ordered a rapid-testing machine, too.
