State Yet To Report La Grange Park Outbreak

LA GRANGE PARK, IL — The state's coronavirus numbers for La Grange Park's Plymouth Place nursing home show the facility has suffered no coronavirus outbreaks in months.

But the nursing home's own numbers demonstrate the opposite.

On Tuesday, La Grange Patch obtained the newsletters to nursing home residents and families from early November to mid-January. According to the newsletters, the nursing home suffered 46 coronavirus cases involving 28 residents and 18 employees.

In an interview, Jackie Terpstra, Plymouth's senior director of clinical services, confirmed the home has suffered an outbreak since the fall.

"I report those numbers as faithfully as the day is long," she said.

She said she did not know why the state has failed to include those numbers on its website.

The website only lists an outbreak at Plymouth early in the pandemic, when 42 cases and 11 deaths were reported.

In the latest outbreak, Terpstra said three residents have died as a result.

Representatives of the Illinois Department of Public Health, which tracks nursing homes' coronavirus numbers, couldn't be reached for immediate comment.

Last year, the state had a similar issue with reporting the earlier outbreak at Plymouth Place. It took 41 days after the nursing home's first coronavirus death before the state finally confirmed an outbreak at the facility on its website. The numbers only were reported after Patch's repeated stories about the problem.

On its website, the department reports outbreaks with as few as two cases.