‘It’s not fair’: Non-Covid El Paso hospital patient transferred to nursing home Covid unit

EL PASO, Texas -- After ABC-7 learned the several local hospitals are transferring Covid-19 patients to local nursing homes with special Covid-19 units, one woman is speaking out asking for transparency from a local nursing rehabilitation center.

Lari Lewis Quigg of Alpine, Texas reached out to ABC-7 after learning about the Covid-19 units. She said her mother, 81-year-old Dale Browne, was flown to El Paso after breaking her back to Del Sol Medical Center -- one of the hospitals relying on Covid-19 units -- and was then transferred several days later to Grace Pointe Wellness Center, a nursing rehabilitation center in west El Paso. ABC-7 reached out to Paramount Health Consultants to confirm if they facility has Covid-19 units but has not heard back.

Quigg said her mother tested negative for Covid-19 while she was at Del Sol, adding that she believes hospital staff worked hard to make sure her mother was put in a good facility. On Thursday, she was moved to center to for rehabilitation. However, after not hearing from her mother -- who has pre-dementia -- or the facility for several days, her sister finally got through to a nurse who told her that her mother had tested positive for Covid-19 and was moved to a floor with other positive Covid-19 patients.

"Nobody contacted us of notified us because of that," Quigg said. "It was my sister calling in to check on mom to see if she could speak with her a nurse...told her she tested positive." Quigg told ABC-7 she called the facility and spoke to the floor nurse who said he had no records of a woman with Browne's name who had tested positive. The nurse then checked the negative list and "found her name on the negative list." "So apparently there's positive and negative hallways and they moved her to a negative hall," Quigg said.

When Quigg questioned the nurse and asked why her sister was told something different about her mother testing positive, she said the nurse who they previous spoke to "did not" tell her sister that. Quiggs claims the nurse told her the facility was was only calling to alert her that Browne was staying on a floor with Covid-19 positive patients and are taking precaution necessary.

“We’re just worried about our mom," Quigg said. "We just want communication we just want someone to let us know what’s going on and we need everyone to be on the same page. We can’t be talking to all these different people and one of them telling us one thing and two other people telling us something else.

ABC-7 asked Dr. Hector Ocaranza, the city and county health authority, if the number of deaths or cases are being communicated to the hospitals.

“It’s up to that nursing home to communicate that kind of information,” Ocaranza said.

ABC-7 confirmed that least two facilities with Covid-19 units -- Mountain View Health and Rehabilitation and St. Giles Nursing and Rehabilitation -- have Covid-19 outbreaks of their own.

ABC-7 obtained the information Grace Pointe submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. As of July 12, the facility reported three positive cases. Quigg told ABC-7 she was told by the facility as of Sunday there had now been 16 positive cases.

"The main thing we wanted to express is our concern that they would send an elderly person to a Covid-19 positive floor," Quigg said. "(My family and I) don't understand the reasoning, nor the confusion in talking to different nurses about whether she was positive or negative."

"It’s not fair to mom and its not fair to us. It’s not fair to other patients there. Who knows what’s going on?" Quigg said.