HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican state lawmakers are pushing Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration to do more to investigate the deaths of older adults who are the subject of an abuse or neglect complaint after Pennsylvania recorded a steep increase in such deaths, starting in 2019.
Shapiro’s Department of Aging has balked at the idea raised by Republican lawmakers, who have pressed the department, or the county-level agencies that investigate abuse or neglect complaints, to gather cause of death information from death records.
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Getting more information about the cause of death is a first step, Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, said in an interview Friday.
“So you have the information, and then the next step is what do we do to protect them, to make sure they’re not on a fatality list somewhere,” Grove said. “That’s that next step, which is the important aspect. We need to get to it.”
In a House Appropriations Committee hearing last month, Rep. John Lawrence, R-Chester, told Shapiro’s Secretary of Aging Jason Kavulich that it was “unacceptable” that the department isn’t already gathering that information when someone dies.
Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration is being pushed to do more to investigate the deaths of older adults who have been the subject of an abuse or neglect complaint. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
“These folks end up dead after someone reported them as being vulnerable and … your agency is telling the press, ‘well, we really don’t know. We really can’t explain. Maybe they died of abuse or neglect. We didn’t really ask,'” Lawrence told Kavulich.
Kavulich told Lawrence that the department is “collecting the data that the law has told us we need to.”
Kavulich followed up in recent days with a letter to the House Appropriations Committee that noted caseworkers are supposed to contact the county coroner…
