by Angela Couloumbis of Spotlight PA |
HARRISBURG — The Shapiro administration last year stopped collecting information on why older adults in Pennsylvania die during open abuse and neglect investigations and no longer examines whether delays or other investigative failures by county agencies might have played a role.
The state Department of Aging in 2021 launched a process to begin tracking the cause of death for every older adult who died during an active investigation, according to records reviewed by Spotlight PA and interviews with former state aging officials. It came at a time when those older adults were dying across Pennsylvania in alarmingly higher numbers.
That process included documenting each death and cross-referencing the information with other records obtained from the state Department of Health that listed both primary and secondary causes of death.
