nursing homes

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused great loss for Massachusetts and people across the country. It has been especially deadly and problematic in nursing homes, due to the age of their residents, variability in COVID-19 protocols, and underlying health conditions of elderly patients....

Pioneer Institute has long recognized that seniors deserve the best of care and that innovative policy solutions are necessary to ensure that this population enjoys a high quality of life in their later years. In the 1990s, early 2000s and most recently in 2017, the Institute dedicated Better Government Competition topics to policy issues related to aging in America. Our goal each time was to find solutions and to take advantage of new innovations that would improve the quality of life and care for the elderly.

This op-ed originally appeared in WGBH News. In much of the country, a substantial number of Covid-19 deaths have occurred in nursing homes. Too many states were caught unaware that crowding, poor infection control, insufficient isolation facilities, and lack of proper training...