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110 Geo. L.J. Online 1 (2021-2022)

handle is hein.journals/gljon110 and id is 1 raw text is: Nursing Homes, COVID-19, and the Consequences of Regulatory Failure NINA A. KOHN* This essay explores the COVID-19 crisis in America's nursing homes and its lessons for the future of long-term care. It challenges narratives portraying nursing homes as the unfortunate victims of COVID-19 by show- ing how the crisis is the foreseeable result of regulatory gaps and failures that have long enabled nursing homes to engage in systemic neglect. It then shows how regulatory approaches employed in other parts of the U.S. healthcare system could be used to create a more humane and resilient long-term care system. It concludes by considering the implications of such reforms for enhancing equity and reducing structural ageism. INTRODUCTION America's nursing homes have been at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first confirmed case in the U.S. was a thirty-five-year-old man returning from Wuhan, China to Snohomish County, Washington.1 Within weeks, 129 cases were recorded at a nursing facility in neighboring King County, Washington.2 By March 2021, the virus had claimed the lives * David M. Levy Professor of Law, Syracuse University College of Law; Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Elder Law, Yale Law School; J.D., Harvard Law School; A.B., Princeton University © 2021. The author thanks Ki-Jana Crawford for his research assistance, the editors of the Georgetown Law Journal Online for their editorial assistance, and Charlene Harrington, Jeff Milder, William Sage, Lori Smetanka, and Sidney Watson for helpful comments on earlier drafts. 1 Michelle L. Holsheu, Chas DeBolt, Scott Lindquist, Kathy Lofy, John Wiesman, Hollianne Bruce, Christopher Spitters, Keith Ericson, Sara Wilkerson, Ahmet Tural, George Diaz, Amanda Cohn, LeAnne Fox, Anita Patel, Susan I. Gerber, Lindsay Kim, Suxiang Tong, Xiaoyan Lu, Steve Linstrom, Mark Pallansch, William C. Weldon, Holly M. Biggs, Timothy M. Uyeki & Satish K. Pillai, First Case of2019 Novel Coronavirus in the United States, 38 NEw ENG. J. MED. 929, 929-30 (2020). 2 Temet M. McMichael, Shauna Clark, Sargis Pogojans, Meagan Kay, James Lewis, Atar Baer, Vance Kawakami, Margaret Lukoff, Jessica Ferro, Claire Brostrom-Smith, Francis X. Riedo, Denny Russell, Brian Hiatt, Patricia Montgomery, Agam K. Rao, Dustin W. Currie, Eric J. Chow, Farrell Tobolowsky, Ana C. Bardossy, Lisa P. Oakley, Jesica R. Jacobs, Noah G. Schwartz, Nimalie Stone, Sujan C. Reddy, John A. Jernigan, Margaret A. Honein, Thomas A. Clark, Jeffrey S. Duchin, COVID-19 in a Long-Term Care Facility King County, Washington, February 27-March 9, 2020, CDC (Mar. 27, 2020), https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6912e 1-H.pdf.