At Least 14 Deaths at One Portland Nursing Home May Be From COVID-19

Healthcare at Foster Creek, which has 61 residents and 50 confirmed COVID-19 cases, won’t be allowed to accept new residents after inspections by the state found problems.

Heathcare at Foster Creek. (Wesley Lapointe)
By Rachel Monahan

The Portland nursing home Healthcare at Foster Creek, which currently has 61 residents, had at least 14 deaths among residents and staff that the facility attributed to COVID-19, according to data the Oregon Department of Human Services released on April 16.

That's five more than the nine documented COVID-19 deaths at the nursing home listed in data released two days ago by the Oregon Health Authority.

As of today, 13 of the deaths are confirmed cases of COVID-19, and one is presumed to be COVID-19. The growing outbreak may represent a failure to keep residents and staff safe.

The new numbers reflect larger questions about how quickly and transparently state regulators responded to COVID-19 cases in Oregon nursing homes. Thirty-two of Oregon's 55 deaths, as of April 14, were at long-term care facilities.

Related: Gov. Kate Brown's PAC received $20,000 from a nursing home company as the COVID-19 pandemic began.

DHS forbade Healthcare at Foster Creek from accepting new patients after documenting a series of failures to protect residents at the facility.

During inspections on April 10, 11 and 12, DHS employees found that Foster Creek staff were working across different wings of the facility, were only provided one mask per shift, failed to wash their hands between treating different residents, and weren't checking residents' respiratory symptoms.

The health authority today reported six new deaths statewide from COVID-19, four of them in Multnomah County. Oregon's total COVID-19 cases now stand at 1,736.

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