“I recorded them murdering patients. I recorded just the complete and absolute disregard for human life,” she said.
According to the video, Olzewski revealed how patients who repeatedly tested negative for COVID-19 were being described as “COVID confirmed” in their charts, which triggered a higher compensation from government payouts.
She contrasted the treatments that they had provided in Florida to what was happening in New York. “[In Florida] we treated our patients with hydroxychloroquine, zinc … sent them home and they were fine.” In New York, “they were banning alternative treatments like hydroxychloroquine. The only thing they could do was to put people on ventilators.”
At the time, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided what some called “perverse incentives” instituted by government COVID-19 relief funding, which awarded significantly more compensation to hospitals should patients be classified as COVID-19 positive ($13,000) or if they are put on a ventilator ($39,000).
Olzewski indicated these incentives dramatically impacted what was happening at Elmhurst. “You know, $13,000 to admit [COVID-19 classified] patients, and they were just admitting everybody.”
She further alleged that with the $39,000 incentive, the hospital would then put admitted patients “on a ventilator that they knew would kill them.” In addition, “in some cases” there was an incentive of “$10,000 [for] every death.” With families kicked out and not being able to monitor, it was “the perfect storm, and people took advantage of it.”
Reflecting on lockdowns last year, and presently in some places, she said they have always been “completely uncalled for. People stayed home and got even more sick, so that caused even more deaths.”
As most states sought to justify their lockdowns on statistics coming out of New York, Olzewski criticized the injustice of “taking away peoples’ freedoms based on New York numbers … which now we know we’re lies.” Much of these high fatality rates, she said, came from “[Gov. Andrew] Cuomo putting these [COVID-19] patients into nursing homes” spreading the infection through members of the most vulnerable population.