MDH to Post Cumulative COVID-19 Data to Its Website

Posted on December 16, 2020 by Jonathan Lips

The MN Department of Health (MDH) plans to post more data to its website about the impact of COVID-19 on nursing homes and assisted living settings than it is posting now.

What MDH is Changing

The MDH Situation Update for COVID-19 for  webpage currently lists congregate care facilities, sorted by county, that have reported an exposure from a case of COVID-19 in a resident or staff person within the past 28 days.  The list is updated every Friday, and facilities come off the list after 28 days pass without an exposure.

What MDH intends to do, likely starting next week, is to post data showing all facilities that have had an exposure to COVID, with cumulative totals for the number of cases in staff, residents and the number of deaths in residents since the pandemic began.  MDH will continue its practice of updating the information weekly; however, providers that have had an exposure will not come off the list with the passage of time.  As is the case with the current list, settings with 10 or fewer residents will not be identified.

MDH explained to us that this is public data, which they have already been sharing with legislative leaders and with media, and their goal is to provide the same transparency to the general public as they have done with lawmakers and reporters.

Our Response & Advocacy

LeadingAge Minnesota fully supports transparency about the impact of COVID-19 on aging services settings, but we expressed to MDH our concern that some members of the public may misunderstand this data.  Specifically, we worry that readers may not understand that what they are seeing is cumulative information, including exposures that occurred in the first wave of COVID earlier this year, and not a current reflection of a given provider.

For those reasons, we have advocated for MDH to do the following as it moves toward implementation:

• Break out and highlight the most current data, such as cases reported within the previous 14 days.
• Clearly state that the data is cumulative across multiple months.
• Communicate that the number of cases will vary with facility size, to be sure readers understand that settings may have higher numbers because they are larger.
• Indicate that facilities that have opened COVID units and accepted COVID positive patients in response to community need can be expected to have higher numbers.
• Continue to note the hard work and remarkable progress that aging services providers have made in the fight against COVID, since the early days of the pandemic.

We have also emphasized the importance of data integrity and urged MDH to identify a Department point person to whom providers can raise questions or identify errors, and who will respond quickly to correcting errors if they occur.

Action Steps

In preparation for this change to the MDH website, we encourage providers to do the following:

• Pull together your cumulative data for the number of cases in staff, residents, and visiting service providers, as well as the number of resident deaths that have occurred, since the beginning of the pandemic, sorted by week or month.  Having this data readily available will allow you to verify the accuracy of the MDH information when it is posted, and to address questions if you receive them.
• Prepare talking points to use if you receive questions from residents, families, community members, media, or other stakeholders.  We have prepared some sample talking points and messages for you to consider and adapt to your own situation.
• If you have not done so already, subscribe to receive alerts when MDH updates its COVID-19 data, so you stay on top of the information that the State is sharing with the public.

We will provide more information to members as soon as we receive it.