YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County and state health departments have determined the state website that reports the number of COVID-19 cases at nursing homes had an erroneous listing for the Woodlands Center for Rehab in Poland for seven weeks in January and February.

The Ohio Department of Health listing on the internet erroneously said the nursing home had three current virus cases among patients throughout January and February. The facility had none during that period. In fact, it has only had one patient case since last April 15.

The ODH removed the erroneous listing Friday morning, leaving up one stating that the facility has had one patient case since April 15 and four staff cases since April 15. None of the staff cases were in January or February.

The correction was made after Ryan Tekac, Mahoning County health commissioner, looked into the matter Thursday at the request of The Vindicator and discovered that the ODH website was listing the facility twice under two similar — but different — names.

The “Woodlands Center for Rehabilitation” listing was incorrect because the facility had not had a new case of the virus since Dec. 21, Tekac said. He contacted the ODH to let it know.

The correct listing called the facility the “Center for Rehab at Hampton Woods” nursing home.

REACHED OUT

Sally Demidovich, corporate administrator for the facility, contacted The Vindicator last week to report that since the beginning of the year, the listing for the facility had indicated incorrectly it had three current patient cases. She said Friday she didn’t realize there were two listings.

“Now, most of our residents have been vaccinated, so you’re not really going to see many cases come up positive in the future with residents. They got vaccinated in December,” she said.

Demidovich said she understands that there are sometimes lags in the reporting of data, but infections fell to such low numbers two weeks ago that Woodlands was the only facility still listed as having three or more combined cases in the three counties.

“When the article says that all of the cases are dropping in the community, but Woodlands Center for Rehabiliation has three, it makes us look bad,” she said.

“We won’t get residents if they see (in the newspaper or on the website) we have patient cases in our facility,” Demidovich said.

Demidovich is administrator over more than one facility and mailings for the Poland facility routinely arrive with various names on them. The name the ODH is using now is the corporate name Center for Rehabilitation at Hampton Woods. The other name is the one the company typically uses, Woodlands Center for Rehab, she said.

The facility primarily works with Mahoning County Public Health to report virus cases, Demidovich said.

MANY EMAILS

The Vindicator wrote multiple emails to Alicia Shoults, spokeperson for the ODH, last week and spoke with a Mahoning County health official by telephone trying to verify that the listing was incorrect.

The official at the local health department said the agency provided the information from the nursing home correctly to the ODH, and the ODH said it had correctly reported the information from the local health department on its website.

Tekac finally solved the puzzle when his staff discovered the double listing.

“Our (epidemiologist) looked into the question you had about the data discrepancy on the ODH website for the Center for Rehab at Hampton Woods,” he said in an email Thursday, adding “the facility has not had a case reported since Dec. 21.”

Shoults with the ODH office of public affairs then confirmed to The Vindicator that it would be correcting the listing Friday morning.

“The local health department has reached out to ODH regarding this facility, and we are working with them to confirm the correct name. Once we have the confirmation from the local health department, we will work to update the dashboard,” she stated.

erunyan@tribtoday.com