Great Lakes Wire

State Rep. Triston Cole (R-Mancelona) recently backed a bill to counteract an executive order that allowed COVID-19 patients to be transferred to nursing homes, alongside residents who weren’t infected, according to the Michigan House Republicans website.

Cole said that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued the executive order without any legislative input, and she refuses to end the policy. He believes that the order has contributed at least to some of the nearly 2,000 nursing home residents who have died of COVID-19 in Michigan.

“Even after reports of elevated deaths in nursing homes started rolling in, the governor stuck with this flawed policy,” Cole said, according to Michigan House Republicans. “How many more of our loved ones have to die scared, helpless and alone in nursing homes before the governor rectifies this situation? We’re standing up for the hundreds of thousands of Michigan families who have moms, dads and grandparents in long-term care facilities and saying, ‘enough is enough’.”

Senate Bill 956 would require the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Department (MDHHS) and the state department for Licensing and Regulatory Affairs to conduct an evaluation and report on the current policies regarding COVID-19 patients and nursing homes by mid-August.

It would also require the MDHHS to design and implement a plan to create at least one facility in each of the state’s eight health regions dedicated to caring for coronavirus patients exclusively.

Lastly, the Legislature would protect nursing home residents by prohibiting individuals with COVID-19 from being placed in any long-term facility, unless it has a building isolated from the rest of the facility where infected patients could be properly cared for while under quarantine.

“Our elderly and most vulnerable residents deserve better,” Cole told Michigan House Republicans. “They never should have had to worry about contagious COVID-19 patients being brought into the facilities they call home.”