On 4 January 2020, I shared my analysis of a June 2021 report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (HHS-OIG) — COVID-19 Had a Devastating Impact on Medicare Beneficiaries in Nursing Homes During 2020.
This included information I see as “missing” regarding the number of U.S. nursing home residents that died in the first and subsequent excess death waves following the COVID-19 pandemic declaration:
In a comment, I said that I sent my article and a request for additional agency contacts to the staff that had brokered my correspondence with the HHS-OIG-OEI team responsible for the report.
Text of comment:
I’ve sent a PDF of this article to the HHS OIG staffers who made sure my letter to went to the report team and who sent me the response. I asked about the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation because Martin Kulldorff was recently appointed as its Chief Science Officer. Kulldorff and I have corresponded in the past, via Twitter direct messaging.
Email: 4 January 2026
Thank you.
I have written an article about what information is missing that HHS needs to gather and disclose to taxpayers.
If you could forward this to the team, I would be grateful.
Also, is there an administrator or office within HHS I can contact about when and how the agency is going to prioritize finding out the total number of nursing home/long term care facility deaths in 2020 (and each year)?
Is this an area within the purview of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation?
Regards,
Jessica Hockett, PhD
I discussed similar issues with U.S. data in “Place of Democide” Differences in UK vs US”, with a focus on the spring 2020 timeframe. The first table in the article shows POD for weeks 12-22 only. Decedent’s home saw the biggest increase (38%) versus 2019.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250716212341/https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/place-of-democide-differences-in
31% of the U.S. hospital inpatient increase in those weeks (+48,065) was from New York City alone (~15,000). See Table 1 in “Eleven Sets of Serious Problems”https://woodhouse76.wpcomstaging.com/2025/12/31/eleven-sets-of-serious-problems-with-the-new-york-city-mass-casualty-event-of-spring-2020-revised-and-formalized-version-of-september-2024-paper/
Response Received
This afternoon I received a response from the public affairs staffer who said the article I sent was shared with the report team and provided me with additional contacts.
Email received 21 January 2026:
Text of email
Ms. Hockett:
In acknowledging receipt of your follow-up email, I note that I am personally not familiar with possible points-of-contact in HHS as to your questions about the precise number of nursing home deaths in 2020, etc., but below are some names identified in CMS’s CCSQ office that you can verify/consider reaching out to:
CMS’s Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) oversees the safety, quality of care, and compliance of nursing homes—including resident deaths, neglect, and abuse. Some possible sources of contact at CCSQ include:
Dora Hughes, MD, MPH (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dora-hughes) is the Chief Medical Officer and Director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality at CMS;
Tamyra Garcia, MPH (Tamyra.Garcia@cms.hhs.gov) is the Deputy Director of Operations for CCSQ tasked with cultivating the infrastructure necessary to improve safety, quality, and coverage across the healthcare continuum. (Garcia previously worked as an Epidemiologist for the CDC); and
Evan Shulman (Evan.Shulman@cms.hhs.gov) is the Director of the Division of Nursing Homes within the Quality, Safety, and Oversight Group at CCSQ.
The CMS organizational chart is here: https://www.cms.gov/files/document/epro-cms-org-chart.pdf, though persons, positions, titles can change often.
As you know, ASPE’s division of Long-Term Services and Supports is responsible for research and evaluation of policies related to long-term care and supportive services and are the focal point for policy development and analysis related to the delivery, organization, and quality of long-term care services and supports, including those supported by Medicaid and Medicare. Per the ASPE Website also, as of January 21, 2026, ASPE’s division of Disability, Aging and Long-Term Care Policy (DALTCP) listed several social science analysts who evaluate topical issues in long-term care. However, I personally do not know whether ASPE is currently examining or reconciling the total number of nursing home/long term care facility deaths in 2020 due to COVID-19. ASPE can best answer these questions — ASPE | Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
Finally, we have shared your attached research paper titled: “How many residents of U.S. nursing homes died in 2020? We still don’t know (but HHS needs to find out)” with the HHS-OIG-OEI report team who worked on the June 2021 OEI report: “COVID-19 Had a Devastating Impact on Medicare Beneficiaries in Nursing Homes During 2020“(OEI-02-20-00490).
Thank you.
I plan to reach out to the agencies and individuals mentioned.
UPDATE: Email sent 27 January 2026:
Good day, Ms. Garcia and Mr. Schulman.
Staff in HHS OIG-OEI referred me to you for questions I have about whether ASPE is currently examining or reconciling and planning to report the weekly, monthly, or total number of nursing home/long term care facility deaths in 2020, regardless of cause of death or place of death. I reviewed a June 2021 publication, corresponded indirectly with the OIG-OEI team that produced it, and wrote a related article. See attached for relevant documents.
On Friday, I am meeting with a New York State senator to apprise him of my concerns about the lack of transparency and accountability for federal, state, and local disclosure of nursing home/LTCF resident deaths, not only in 2020 but as a matter of course. After multiple committees and reports, we still do not know, for example, the number of facility residents that died in New York State or New York City in spring 2020. I’m not referring only to deaths attributed to COVID, but all resident deaths, be those in the care facilities, hospitals, or soon after being discharged to a personal residence.
In my own state (Illinois), I’ve been unable to obtain the data I seek but deduced via comparison of state-published care home COVID death figures and data from CDC WONDER that the majority of nursing home residents statewide and in the city of Chicago who died in spring 2020 died in hospitals and that close to a majority, if not more, of deaths attributed to COVID in hospitals were, in fact, residents who had been transferred in from nursing homes. I appreciate any time you might be able to give to reviewing the attached information and look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Jessica Hockett, PhD
UPDATE: 6 March 2026 – No response received.
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