COvid-19 cases were on the rise at Michigan’s McLaren Flint hospital. So Roger Liddell, 64, who purchased supplies for the hospital, requested an N95 respirator for his own protection, as his work brought him to the same room as covid positive patients.
But the hospital rejected his request, said Kelly Indish, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 875.
On March 30, Liddell posted on Facebook that he had worked the week before in the critical care unit and ICU, and that he now had the virus. “Pray for me, God is still in control,” he wrote. He died on April 10.
Liddell’s death, along with the deaths of dozens of other health workers, is raising new questions about whether government regulators are doing enough to hold employers accountable during the pandemic. Since March, more than 4,100 Covid-19-related complaints regarding health care facilities have been dumped into the national network of federal and state Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) offices, charged with protecting workers damage at work. The agency received five complaints about Liddell’s workplace in the weeks leading up to his death, describing employees who received “zero PPE.”
A KHN investigation found that at least 35 healthcare workers died after Osha received safety complaints about their workplaces. However, by June 21, the agency had quietly closed almost all of those complaints, and none of them led to a subpoena or a fine. According to public records, around 1,300 of Covid-19’s healthcare-related complaints remain open and around 275 death investigations continue.
The complaint records, which have been released, show thousands of desperate requests from workers seeking better protective equipment for their hospitals, doctor’s offices, and nursing homes.
The swift closure of complaints underscores the Trump administration’s supervisory approach, former Osha official Deborah Berkowitz said. Instead of cracking down, the agency simply sent letters reminding employers to follow the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Berkowitz, now director of the National Employment Law Project.
“This is a parody,” he said.
Eugene Scalia, the attorney Donald Trump appointed to head the U.S. Department of Labor, which handles worker safety, spent years in private practice helping corporations fight health and safety regulations aimed at protect workers. Now Scalia, the son of the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin, oversees the federal agency charged with protecting such regulations.
During a June 9 legislative hearing, Scalia said Osha had issued only a citation related to the coronavirus for violating federal regulations. A Georgia nursing home was fined $ 3,900 for failing to report workers’ hospitalizations on time, Osha’s records show.
Of the thousands of closed complaints across the country, 21 alleged that workers faced threats of retaliation for actions such as denouncing the lack of PPE. At a Delaware hospital, workers said they were not allowed to wear N95 masks “for fear of termination or retaliation.” At an Atlanta hospital, workers said administrators threatened to fire them if they “raise[d] concerns about PPE when working with patients with Covid-19 “.
More than 100 cases were marked as resolved in 10 days. One alleged that home care nurses were dispatched to the Bronx to treat Covid-19 patients without full protective equipment. According to reports, in an Ohio nursing home, workers were not required to wear protective equipment when caring for patients with Covid-19. That complaint was closed three days after Osha received it.
It is unclear how the agency resolved hundreds of complaints. A Labor Department spokesman wrote in an email that some were closed due to an information exchange between the employer and Osha, and advised reporters to submit Freedom of Information Act requests for details on others.
“The Department is committed to protecting American workers during the pandemic,” the labor department said in a statement. “OSHA has established standards to protect employees, and employers who do not take adequate measures to protect their employees may be violating.”
A March 16 complaint against the Clara Maass Medical Center in New Jersey illustrates the life and death bets. According to the complaint, the workers “were not allowed adequate access” to personal protective equipment (PPE).
Days later, Barbara Birchenough, 65, a veteran nurse at the hospital, texted her daughter: “The ICU nurses were making robes out of garbage bags. … Dad is going to pick up big garbage bags for me just in case. “
Kristin Carbone said her mother was not working in a designated Covid-19 area, but that symptomatic patients were in her care. Later that day, Birchenough texted her saying she had a cough and a headache, adding that she and her colleagues had been exposed to six patients who were being tested for the virus.
“Please pray for all the health workers,” he wrote. “We are running out of supplies.”
By April 15, Birchenough had died from the virus. “They weren’t protecting their employees, in my opinion,” said Carbone. “It’s more than sad, but then I go to a different place where I get mad.”
Osha’s records show six current investigations into a fatality or group of hospitalizations of workers at the hospital. A spokesman for the labor department said other initial complaints about Clara Maass remained open and did not explain why they continued to appear on a closed list of cases.
Birchenough’s colleague Nestor Bautista, 62, also died of Covid-19 on April 15. Nestor’s sister Cecilia Bautista described her brother, a nursing assistant, as a quiet and devoted employee.
In response to the allegations in Osha’s complaint, a hospital spokesperson wrote: “Although the source of the exposure has not been determined, several staff members” contracted the virus and “a few” died. “Our staff has been in regular contact with OSHA, providing notifications and cooperating fully with all inquiries.”
On May 19, Osha advised his inspectors to make reporting deaths and imminent dangers a top priority, with a special focus on healthcare settings. Aside from the complaints, Osha has opened more than 250 of its own investigations into deaths at health facilities since late March, government records show. Most of those cases are ongoing.
According to complaints against McLaren Flint, workers did not receive the necessary N95 masks and were not allowed to bring them from home.
The resulting inspection did little for Liddell, or for his colleague Patrick Cain, 52, a registered nurse, who was treating people waiting for Covid-19 diagnostic test results without an N95 respirator. She was also working outside a room where potential Covid-19 patients were undergoing treatments that research has found have widely spread the virus in the air.
At the time, there was a debate about whether EPP supply chain breakdowns and CDC’s weakened guidelines on protective equipment were putting workers at risk. Cain felt vulnerable working outside the rooms where Covid-19 patients were undergoing infection-propagation treatments, he wrote in a text to Indish about 26 March.
“McLaren screwed us over,” the text said.
He fell ill in mid-March and died on April 4. (McLaren has since revised its respirator policy, allowing Covid-19 floor workers to receive N95 and controlled air-purifying respirators, or CAPRs.)
Osha’s Michigan office closed the five complaints it had received about a shortage of protective equipment on April 21, after the hospital submitted documentation saying the problems had been resolved. There was no on-site inspection, the hospital and the agency confirmed. The hospital’s written response was deemed sufficient to close the complaints, a local Osha spokesperson confirmed.
A spokesperson for the McLaren Health Care system said Osha’s complaints were “unfounded” and that her protocols had consistently followed guidelines. “We have always provided appropriate PPE and staff training that adhere to evolving federal, state and local PPE guidelines,” Brian Brown said in an email.
Osha’s investigations into the deaths of Liddell and Cain continue, according to a spokesman for the state department of labor and economic opportunity.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a non-profit news service that covers health topics. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente
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