The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requires nursing homes to provide weekly updates on the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths among residents and staff.
The most recent weekly update, through June 7, was published on June 18. Here are the numbers for El Paso nursing homes. Click on any dot to see data on that nursing home.
Map by Emma Baker/El Paso Matters
The largest number of cases has been at Mountain View Health and Rehabilitation, 1600 Murchison, which reported 83 resident COVID-19 cases and 44 among staff. (The resident number is lower than previously reported, which sometimes occurs as data is re-examined.) Only three nursing homes in Texas have reported more combined cases among residents and staff.
Mountain View is the only El Paso nursing home listed as not passing CMS’s “quality assurance test” on data, meaning there are questions about the reliability of numbers being reported by the facility. The agency’s guidance says that nursing homes that don’t pass the data quality test will not have their data included in the report. A CMS official said that if a facility failed the data quality test but is still showing data in the report, “it means the data that did not meet the quality check was removed, but data that did meet the quality check was still posted.”
It’s not clear what data from Mountain View was flawed and stripped from the report.
The largest number of deaths in El Paso has been 11 at the Ambrosio Guillen Texas State Veterans Nursing Home, 9650 Kenworthy. Only seven nursing homes in Texas have reported more deaths.
Although all nursing homes are required to provide data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, one El Paso nursing home still hasn’t done so, according to the agency — Nazareth Living Care Center, 1475 Raynor.
The El Paso Department of Public Health will not provide COVID-19 data on individual nursing homes, even though nursing homes are required by law to report such data to the federal government.
However, the health department does provide cumulative data on nursing homes and other facilities with “clusters” of COVID-19.
In its most recent clusters report dated June 12, six days later than the CMS data, the health department reports 133 COVID-19 cases among nursing home residents, including 23 deaths, and 128 cases among nursing home workers.
The most recent federal report, which relies on older data, lists 128 cases among El Paso nursing home residents, including 13 deaths, and 72 cases among nursing home workers.
Other media have questioned the latest CMS numbers. For example, the total number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes went down by more than 2,000 this week, which the agency hasn’t explained.
Cover photo: Texas National Guard soldiers were visible on May 31 outside Mountain View Health and Rehabilitation, a nursing care facility at 1600 Murchison in West-Central El Paso. The soldiers were tasked by Gov. Greg Abbott to disinfect nursing homes with COVID-19 cases. (Robert Moore/El Paso Matters)
