HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Republican state lawmakers are calling on Gov. Josh Shapiro to respond to a sharp increase in deaths of elderly people in Pennsylvania who have been the subject of abuse and neglect claims since 2019. is calling on the government to step up its investigation after recording a sharp increase in deaths of elderly people accused of abuse and neglect. 2019.
Mr. Shapiro’s Office on Aging has balked at proposals from Republican lawmakers who have been pressuring the agency and county-level agencies that investigate complaints of abuse and neglect to collect cause-of-death information from death records. .
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Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, the top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, said in an interview Friday that the first step is to get more information about the cause of death.
“We have the information. The next step is what we do to protect them and make sure they’re not on some death list somewhere,” Grove said. “That’s the next step and the important aspect. We need to get there.”
During a House Appropriations Committee hearing last month, Rep. John Lawrence (R-Chester) told Shapiro’s Senior Citizens Secretary Jason Cavulich that the department already collects that information when someone dies. He said not having one is “unacceptable.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration is being asked to conduct further investigations into the deaths of elderly people who were the subject of allegations of abuse and neglect. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
“These people died after someone reported them as vulnerable, and… your agency tells the press, ‘Well, we really don’t know. Really explain. We can’t. They probably died of abuse or neglect. We didn’t really ask,” Lawrence told Cavulich.
Cavulich told Lawrence that the department is “collecting data as required by law.”
Cavulich sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee in recent days pointing out that caseworkers are supposed to contact the county medical examiner if they have reason to suspect that an elderly person died from abuse.
But Cavulich also wrote that neither the department nor county-level agencies have “legal authority” to access cause-of-death information.
Grove questioned that, saying death certificates are public records and that department and county caseworkers should be able to request information from coroners and health departments.
In a statement, Lawrence called Kavlich’s written response “an incoherent word salad that throws blame in every direction and takes no responsibility.”
“It gives me great pause that we don’t have a simple answer to a simple question: Why aren’t we asking why these seniors died?” Lawrence wrote.
If the state attorney general’s office hasn’t already investigated the matter, it should start doing so tomorrow, Lawrence wrote.
Lawmakers raised the question after Pennsylvania recorded a more than 10-fold increase in deaths of elderly people due to allegations of abuse and neglect, from 120 in 2017 to 1,288 last year. In 2022, he reached 1,389 people.
The department does not normally release death data, but did so at the request of The Associated Press.
The increase comes as the coronavirus pandemic hits the nation, the number of complaints increases and agencies struggle to retain caseworkers.
The Department on Aging suggested this data could be misleading because the deaths may have had no connection to the initial abuse or neglect complaint.
Provincial and county-level officials speculate that the increase may be due to the growing population of people aged 65 and older, an increase in complaints, and the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the elderly.
It’s not clear whether improved data collection helped explain the increase, but there is evidence that other similar jurisdictions, such as Michigan and Illinois, have seen less steep increases.
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Broad mortality rates among older adults have not increased as sharply during the pandemic, going from about 4% for people 65 and older in 2018 to 4.5% in 2021, according to federal statistics. .
The agency contracts with 52 county-level “Area Agencies on Aging” to investigate complaints of abuse and neglect and coordinate with physicians, service providers and, when necessary, law enforcement.
Most calls involve people who live alone or with family or carers. Poverty is often a factor.
