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In a COVID-19 world, the nature of providing long-term care carries substantial risk to residents and workers and without stronger regulatory oversight, residents and workers remain at risk.

That is the assessment of IU McKinney Professor Nicolas Terry, writing a two-part series for Harvard University’s Bill of Health blog with co-author Tara Sklar of the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.

In this first installment the authors assess the centrality of care facilities to the COVID-19 pandemic and outline the infection risks for residents and workers.

“Workers’ fear and anger are palpable in complaints where they report being forced to work while symptomatic or even after having tested positive for COVID-19, being kept in the dark about outbreaks in their own facilities, and being pressured to erase signs of the disease from medical charts and records,” they write.

The upcoming second installment will explore how improved regulation and enforcement, combined with liability rules, provide the best path forward to improve an industry that, despite its deficiencies, claims it deserves exceptional immunity.

Professor Terry is the Hall Render Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Hall Center for Law and Health at IU McKinney, where he teaches healthcare and health policy courses. His recent scholarship has dealt with health privacy, mobile health, the Internet of Things, Big Data, AI, and the opioid overdose epidemic.

He is one of the permanent bloggers at the Bill of Health blog and is a host of “The Week in Health Law” podcast at TWIHL.com. He is @nicolasterry on twitter.