The Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) started listing the names of individual nursing homes with all of their coronavirus statistics on May 18, but the report doesn’t cover assisted living facilities. Families of residents in those facilities don’t understand why they aren’t just as important as nursing homes.

“We were kind of excited, because we were finally getting specific information, not the information you get on a robocall,” said the son of a couple in their 90s who are residents of an assisted living facility. It didn’t happen, and he wonders why those facilities are considered to be any different from nursing homes.

The LDH report included data on staff and resident coronavirus infections and deaths at Louisiana’s 279 federally certified nursing homes. However, The Advocate reported it provided no information on the 157 other adult residential facilities in the state, a category that included assisted living facilities.

The crisis isn’t as serious in those places as it is in nursing homes, the newspaper said, but state officials haven’t shared a clear rationale for their decision not to make more information about those homes public.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services planned to make the nursing home information public by the middle of May, and a spokeswoman said the LDH is simply following the guidance of the federal agency. She did say the department is closely monitoring adult residential facilities “to minimize infection and protect their residents and staff.”

“The difference is that (adult residential facilities) are not required by the federal government to report this information,” she said. “We are following the government’s lead.” However, she said the state will continue to report data from adult residential facilities in aggregate every week.

“We were disappointed,” said the son of that couple in their 90s. “We thought we were going to be getting real information on (their parents’ facility) for the first time in two months.”

Denise Bottcher, state director of the AARP, told The Advocate the state shouldn’t be drawing a distinction between the two types of homes. Both are vulnerable to COVID-19 outbreaks, she said.

“If the feds are doing this for the nursing homes, shouldn’t the state be doing this for assisted living facilities?” Bottcher asked. “Congregate settings are the epicenter of this. Families need to know. If a family member gets information that a facility has a case, they want to know how it’s being handled.”

We see no reason for differentiating between assisted living and nursinng homes, either. Like nursing homes, assisted living facilties also house many of Louisiana’s elderly loved ones.