Gov. Cuomo on His Nursing Home Deaths Scandal: We’re Going After ‘for-Profit Nursing Homes’

EXCERPT:

CUOMO: “Our focus, I believe, is going to be on the for-profit nursing homes — hospitals, low-performing hospitals, but also on the for-profit nursing homes. I have long believed that there’s a tension in a for-profit nursing home because those institutions are trying to make money. If you’re trying to make profit, it’s too easy to sacrifice patient care. Everything becomes one or the other. Do you want to hire more staff, or do you want to make more profit? Do you want to buy more PPE and stockpile more PPE, or do you want to make more profit? Do you want to buy new equipment, new beds, new sheets, new furniture, invest in the facility, or do you want to make more profit? That tension is a problem, and that has to be resolved legislatively, because I don’t want to leave it to these for-profit owners to decide what’s right, what’s wrong. Let’s learn these lessons.”