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Gabe is the National News Editor and works out of Washington, D.C. Have a tip? Send it to gabe@fingerlakes1.com.
“In today’s regulatory environment, health care providers are forced to navigate within a labyrinth of complex governmental regulations, and one wrong can carry drastic consequences.”
The coronavirus pandemic clamped down on Albany last summer, bringing most policymaking and lobbying to a halt. However, that didn’t happen for Hinman Straub Advisers, LLC, and the Centers Health Care company.
Hinman Straub, an Albany-based lobbying firm, has been pushing the interests of Centers Health Care, one of the largest nursing home care providers in the entire state, at the expense of residents and families after the Legislature failed to pass crucial nursing home-related legislation.
WBFO Albany Correspondent Karen Dewitt reports
The number of nursing home residents who died from COVID-19 has been in dispute for months. The state health department has said 8,711 residents died of the disease, but it has not released key data, including the number of residents who died after they were transferred to a hospital.
Attorney General Tish James, an ally of the governor who, like Cuomo, is a Democrat, said investigators examined a sample of 62, or about 10%, of the state’s 600 nursing homes. The homes reported 1,914 deaths of residents from COVID-19, but the Department of Health reported 1,229 deaths at those same facilities.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James spoke at Aenon Baptist Church in Rochester on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2020. A report from New York’s attorney general finds that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration may have undercounted by as much as 50 percent the number of the state’s nursing home residents who died at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York last spring. The news has led the Republican leader of the state Senate to call for the state health commissioner’s resignation. The number of nursing home residents who died from COVID-19 has been in dispute for months. The state health department has said 8,711 residents died of the disease, but it has not released key data, including the number of residents who died after they were transferred to a hospital.