No. On April 17, 2020, The Columbus Dispatch reported that Ohio Health Director Amy Acton released long-term-care COVID-19 case numbers but did not disclose how many facility employees had tested positive, and that the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) had refused to release nursing-home and assisted-living death totals without offering a legal justification. Days later, ODH pulled down its own facility-level case report after industry objections and admitted data-entry problems.
Separately, a 2021–22 court ruling later found part of Ohio’s nursing-home data withholding unlawful. That case — decided by the Ohio Court of Claims and the Tenth District Court of Appeals — applied to ODH as an agency and was decided after Acton left office in June 2020. This is an ODH transparency record during Acton’s tenure, not proof that Acton personally concealed every figure.
Reporting in April 2020 said Ohio released some long-term-care case data but had not yet released full death numbers or staff positive-test counts requested by reporters.
Yes, but only after press pressure — and the facility-level report was later pulled due to accuracy problems. WKYC investigative reporting documents a transparency gap specific to Acton-led ODH: ODH withheld nursing-home death counts and employee case data, and Acton had to be personally pressed by reporters before agreeing to release facility-level data, which was then deleted days later due to inaccuracies. The Columbus Dispatch reported on April 17, 2020 that Acton released the number of COVID-19 cases in long-term-care facilities, while also noting that she did not provide employee positive-test numbers
The more defensible claim, and the one this page uses, is that reporters said the state had not released nursing-home and assisted-living death numbers at that time and had not provided a legal justification for withholding them. A later court ruling found the agency’s withholding practice unlawful, but named the Ohio Department of Health, not Acton personally, and the underlying records request was filed the same month she left office.
Yes. In WCPO-TV v. Ohio Department of Health, the Ohio Court of Claims (4/29/21) and the Tenth District Court of Appeals (6/2/22, No. 21AP-277) found ODH violated the Public Records Act by refusing to disclose the number and dates of COVID-19 deaths at a named nursing home. The ruling concerned facility-level death data; similar facility-level disclosure issues were documented during Acton’s tenure.
Yes, in substance. At the same April 17, 2020 briefing where the state’s long-term-care case count was released, Acton said: “It’s not that hospitals or nursing homes are doing something wrong. These are very high risk places where more of our populations that are exposed… The work that is being done is heroic.” That framing (infection risk, not facility fault) ran alongside the same-week reporting that death and staff-infection data was being withheld.
Yes, separately from the nursing-home death-data question. In March 2020, Ohio stopped publicly reporting negative COVID-19 test results, a decision DeWine administration officials said was made because they felt the negative numbers gave a misleading, incomplete picture.
Families, residents, staff, and facilities needed accurate information to understand outbreak risk in the settings where seniors were most vulnerable.
What Was Released vs. Withheld / Delayed
| What Was Released | What Was Not Released / Was Delayed | Why It Mattered |
|---|---|---|
| Statewide and long-term-care COVID-19 case counts, updated periodically as facilities reported to ODH. | Facility-level and statewide nursing-home death totals; a legal justification for withholding those death numbers. | Families and facilities could not fully assess outbreak risk or mortality in specific settings where seniors were most vulnerable. |
| General COVID-19 positive-test case totals reported by the state’s in-house testing. | Statewide negative COVID-19 test results, which Ohio stopped publicly reporting in March 2020. | Reporters and the public lost a data point needed to gauge the true scope of testing and the state’s positivity rate. |
| Long-term-care resident case numbers, released by Acton and ODH. | Employee/staff positive-test counts at nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, which had been requested by reporters for more than a week before the April 17, 2020 report. | Workers and their families lacked visibility into workplace exposure risk inside long-term-care facilities. |
| Aggregate case and death figures released over time as media and public pressure continued through 2020. | Names and site-level identification of individual nursing homes with COVID deaths, which a formal records complaint sought to obtain. | Without facility-level identification, families and prospective residents could not compare outbreak severity across specific homes. |
| A facility-level hot-spot report ODH briefly published identifying case counts at roughly 840 nursing homes. | The same report, days after publication — ODH pulled it down following industry objections and acknowledged its own data-entry and accuracy problems. | The retraction compounded the information vacuum: even when facility-level data was briefly public, the state itself could not stand behind its accuracy. |
| A court order (2021–22) directing release of death counts and dates at one named facility, after a records request filed the same month Acton left office. | Demographic detail that could identify individual residents, which the Tenth District allowed ODH to continue withholding even after ruling for disclosure of aggregate counts. | The ruling is the clearest legal validation that ODH’s facility-level withholding practice, begun under Acton, was unlawful — though it targets the agency, not Acton personally, and came after her tenure. |
| COVID-19 case counts at each long-term-care facility, published on ODH’s website. | Facility-level death counts — ODH listed COVID-19 deaths only at the county level, not by individual nursing home, even after the case-count data was public. | Families like Joy Gazaway’s could see how many cases a facility had, but not how many residents had died there — the exact data point she said would have helped her choose a facility for her brother. |
Reporting Chronology – Nursing-Home Data Transparency
| Date | Claim / Evidence | What This Establishes | Source | Source URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/25/20 | Ohio stopped publicly reporting negative COVID-19 test results; DeWine administration officials said they made the decision because the negative numbers gave a misleading, incomplete picture given the state only had in-house test data. | Establishes that Ohio stopped reporting negative COVID-19 test results in March 2020 — a separate but related transparency decision. | Plain Dealer | https://www.cleveland.com/coronavirus/2020/03/why-isnt-ohio-reporting-negative-coronavirus-test-results.html |
| 4/12/20 | Reporting on Ohio’s COVID death toll noted nursing-home residents made up a growing share of confirmed deaths. | Establishes that nursing-home residents were an early and growing share of Ohio’s confirmed COVID deaths. | The Columbus Dispatch | https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/coronavirus/2020/04/12/coronavirus-at-least-40-dead/1365927007/ |
| 4/15/20 | Reporting said roughly 700 of Ohio’s COVID-19 cases were nursing-home residents, with deaths including both residents and staff. | Establishes the early case-count baseline (~700 residents) and confirms facility-level death data was not yet disclosed. | StateNews / NPR affiliate reporting | https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2020-04-15/700-ohio-covid-19-cases-are-nursing-home-residents-deaths-include-residents-and-staff |
| 4/17/20 | More than 100 Ohio nursing homes and assisted-living facilities reported 826 residents affected. The Ohio Department of Health again refused to release facility-level or statewide nursing-home death totals. Acton released long-term-care case numbers but did not disclose how many facility employees had tested positive, despite reporter requests dating back more than a week. The state gave no legal justification for withholding the death numbers. | “Did Ohio release nursing-home COVID death data?” — core claim | WKYC 3News Investigates | https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/investigations/3news-investigates-nursing-home-covid-19-data-still-in-doubt/95-14fba786-a701-4cd3-859b-8c1970f48841 |
| 4/17/20 (b) | At the same briefing where the 826-case figure was released, Acton pushed back on the idea that reporting cases reflected poorly on facilities: “A lot is made of this, but we shouldn’t be surprised by this data. It’s not that hospitals or nursing homes are doing something wrong. These are very high risk places where more of our populations that are exposed. The work that is being done is heroic and we are coming alongside them to do that job well.” The same report noted Ohio’s website listed case counts but not long-term-care death counts, while it did report both case and death counts for state prisons. | Establishes Acton’s own framing of the case data at the same briefing where the withholding occurred. | Business Journal Daily (The Youngstown Publishing Company) | https://businessjournaldaily.com/state-reports-73-virus-cases-at-area-nursing-homes/ |
| 4/23/20 | Reporting said Ohio nursing homes had reported 781 COVID-19 cases while death data specific to those facilities was still not being disclosed at that point. | Establishes that facility-level death data remained undisclosed as of late April 2020. | WOSU Public Media | https://www.wosu.org/news/2020-04-23/coronavirus-in-ohio-nursing-homes-report-781-cases-but-dont-disclose-deaths |
| 4/23/20 (b) | ODH published a facility-level report identifying COVID-19 hot spots at roughly 840 Ohio nursing homes, then pulled the report down after industry objections that the data was misleading or inaccurate; ODH itself acknowledged data-entry and accuracy problems. WKYC 3News Investigates reported this followed weeks of refused public-records requests to county health departments, after which Acton herself agreed with 3News’ position and ordered the facility-level data released — only for it to be deleted within days once a large number of inaccuracies surfaced. | Establishes that ODH’s own facility-level data was unreliable enough to retract, compounding the disclosure gap. | News 5 Cleveland (WEWS); WKYC 3News Investigates | https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/investigations/state-report-identifies-covid-19-hot-spots-at-ohio-nursing-homes |
| 5/20/20 | New ODH statistics showed at least 1,246 Ohio long-term-care residents had died of COVID-19 — about 70% of the state’s total COVID deaths — including 877 deaths reported since mid-April in facilities identified only by county (38 counties), plus 369 earlier deaths recorded before the state tracked facility type at all. | Establishes the death-toll scale (1,246+) driving continued pressure for facility-level disclosure. | Associated Press (via WKRC/Local 12) | https://local12.com/news/local/nursing-home-deaths-account-for-70-percent-of-ohios-overall-total-ohio-cincinnati |
| 6/5/20 | As the nursing-home industry lobbied for COVID lawsuit immunity, independent reporting put Ohio’s long-term-care COVID death toll at roughly 1,641 residents — about 70% of the state’s known death toll at that point — a scale of loss that made the facility-level disclosure fight consequential. | Establishes the death-toll scale (1,641+) as the industry simultaneously sought liability protection. | Ohio Capital Journal (citing Cleveland.com data) | https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2020/06/05/as-1600-residents-die-the-nursing-home-industry-fights-for-lawsuit-protections/ |
| 6/15/20 | WCPO filed a public-records request for the number of COVID-19 deaths at a specific Cincinnati nursing home and at all nursing homes in Hamilton, Clermont, Butler, and Warren counties. ODH denied it — without offering WCPO a chance to revise the request, as the law requires — prompting a formal complaint in the Ohio Court of Claims. | Establishes the formal start of the records dispute that led to the court rulings below. | WCPO 9 (I-Team) | https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/wcpo-files-complaint-asking-ohio-officials-to-release-names-of-nursing-homes-with-covid-deaths |
| 8/14/20 | Reporting months later said the state was still keeping nursing-home outbreak site information secret, prompting continued public-records pressure. | Establishes that facility-level secrecy continued months after Acton’s departure. | Cincinnati.com / USA Today Network – Ohio | https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/08/14/coronavirus-ohio-nursing-homes-state-keeps-sites-secret/3333748001/ |
| 9/17/20 | A joint WCPO/News 5 Cleveland (WEWS) investigation profiled Donald Tobias Gazaway, 60, who died of COVID-19 on April 19, 2020 at Pleasant Ridge Care Center in Cincinnati, three weeks after arriving for stroke rehabilitation. In a same-week interview with WEWS, Gov. DeWine said he would “revisit the issue” with ODH attorneys, who had told him nursing-home COVID fatality rates were considered private under state law. | Establishes DeWine’s acknowledgment, three months after Acton left, that ODH’s legal rationale for withholding was still unresolved. | WCPO 9 / News 5 Cleveland (WEWS), joint investigation | https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/which-ohio-nursing-homes-have-had-covid-19-deaths-state-government-refuses-to-tell |
| 4/1/21 | Special Master Jeff Clark ruled ODH committed a “per se violation” of the Public Records Act by denying WCPO’s request for nursing-home death numbers, rejecting ODH’s argument that death data was private (the same information is on public death certificates). Clark also ruled that, going forward, such requests must be made facility-by-facility, since that is how ODH stores the data. | Establishes the first legal finding that ODH’s withholding violated Ohio’s Public Records Act. | WCPO 9 (I-Team); reported on YouTube as “Ohio kept secret where COVID-19 nursing home deaths happened” | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cabAG66wqw |
| 11/17/21 | As litigation moved to the Tenth District Court of Appeals — one of five parallel Ohio public-records cases against ODH over COVID death data, including a separate Columbus case brought by Rosanna Miller — reporting found ODH had spent more than $45,000 in legal fees fighting disclosure. WCPO attorney Darren Ford: “These are the people’s records. They are not ODH’s records. They belong to every citizen in the state of Ohio.” More than 8,000 Ohio long-term-care residents had died of COVID by this point. | Establishes the scale of ODH’s legal resistance to disclosure ($45,000+ in fees). | WCPO 9 (I-Team) | https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/ohio-has-spent-more-than-45k-to-fight-wcpos-request-for-nursing-home-deaths-to-be-made-public |
| Ct. of Claims 4/29/21; 10th Dist. 6/2/22 | The Ohio Court of Claims adopted the special master’s report, and the Tenth District Court of Appeals affirmed, formalizing the finding that ODH violated Ohio’s Public Records Act (R.C. 149.43). Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge William Klatt held that WCPO’s core request — the number and dates of 2020 COVID deaths at Burlington House Rehab and Alzheimer’s Care Center — did not seek protected health information and that aggregate death data must be released; the panel let ODH continue withholding individually identifying details such as a decedent’s sex or specific date of death. ODH had spent more than $56,000 in legal fees fighting the case over nine months (Nov. 2020–Aug. 2021) alone. The underlying records request was filed 6/15/20 — the same month Acton left ODH — so the ruling names the agency, and the litigation itself played out entirely under her successors, but it validates the same category of facility-level withholding documented under Acton in April 2020. By this point, more than 9,100 Ohio long-term-care residents had died of COVID. | Establishes the final, affirmed legal finding that ODH violated the Public Records Act — applicable to the agency, decided after Acton’s tenure. | Ohio Court of Claims; Tenth District Court of Appeals (WCPO-TV v. Ohio Dept. of Health, No. 21AP-277) | https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/oh-court-of-appeals/2174375.html |
Human Impact: The Gazaway Case
Joy Gazaway’s brother, Donald Tobias Gazaway, arrived at Pleasant Ridge Care Center in Cincinnati in April 2020 to recover from a stroke and died of COVID-19 on April 19, 2020, three weeks later, according to his death certificate. He was 60. Because Ohio would not release facility-level death data, Gazaway had no way to know a facility’s COVID death toll before choosing it for a loved one’s care. She said the missing mortality data — not the lobby, the furniture, or the amenities — was what she actually needed to judge the level of care she could expect. After the Tenth District’s 2022 ruling, Gazaway said: “The little person would not have had the ability to challenge the Ohio Department of Health or the nursing home community in getting the release of these figures. So kudos to WCPO … this is public information.”
Ohio was also an outlier among its neighbors: WCPO reported that Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and West Virginia all openly released facility-level nursing-home COVID death data, while Ohio did not. WCPO’s attorney, Jack Greiner, put it directly regarding the 2021 special master ruling: “The Ohio Department of Health ignored it. They just ignored that provision of the law, and they were called out for it by the special master.”
In a September 2020 interview — three months after Acton’s departure — Gov. DeWine told WEWS he would “revisit the issue” with ODH attorneys, who had told him nursing-home COVID fatality rates were considered private under state law: “I’ve questioned this before, and I’m going back to the lawyers to say, ‘Look, do you really think this is a violation of current federal law and current state law?’ And we’ll get back to you on this.” The practice continued for another year and a half after that statement, through the 2021 special master ruling and the 2022 appeals court decision.
Sources & Evidence
| Primary / Reporting | Claim Supported | Evidence | Source Name | Source Type | Date | Source URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary | ODH violated Ohio’s Public Records Act by refusing to disclose nursing-home COVID death counts and dates for a named facility. | Court of Claims judgment adopting the special master’s report; Tenth District Court of Appeals decision affirming. | Ohio Court of Claims / Tenth District Court of Appeals | Primary (Court Record) | 4/29/21; 6/2/22 | https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/oh-court-of-appeals/2174375.html |
| Reporting | Ohio stopped publicly reporting negative COVID-19 test results. | Contemporaneous news report quoting DeWine administration officials and Acton on the decision and its rationale. | Plain Dealer / cleveland.com | News (Contemporaneous) | 3/25/20 | https://www.cleveland.com/coronavirus/2020/03/why-isnt-ohio-reporting-negative-coronavirus-test-results.html |
| Reporting | Nursing-home residents made up a growing share of Ohio’s confirmed COVID deaths. | Contemporaneous death-toll reporting. | The Columbus Dispatch | News (Contemporaneous) | 4/12/20 | https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/coronavirus/2020/04/12/coronavirus-at-least-40-dead/1365927007/ |
| Reporting | ~700 of Ohio’s COVID cases were nursing-home/LTC residents; deaths included both residents and staff; facility-level death data was not being released. | Contemporaneous report citing ODH’s own case data, plus interviews with a facility resident’s family member and an Ohio Health Care Association representative. | StateNews (statenews.org) | News (Contemporaneous) | 4/15/20 | https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2020-04-15/700-ohio-covid-19-cases-are-nursing-home-residents-deaths-include-residents-and-staff |
| Reporting | ODH withheld nursing-home death counts and employee case data amid 826 resident cases across 100+ facilities (~10% of state total); no legal justification given. | Investigative report documenting ODH’s refusal to release facility-level death and employee-infection data. | WKYC 3News Investigates | News (Investigative) | 4/17/20 | https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/investigations/3news-investigates-nursing-home-covid-19-data-still-in-doubt/95-14fba786-a701-4cd3-859b-8c1970f48841 |
| Reporting | Acton said nursing homes and hospitals weren’t “doing something wrong” and framed high case counts as a function of congregate-setting risk, not facility fault. | Direct Acton quote from an ODH press briefing, reported alongside the same day’s case-count release. | Business Journal Daily (Youngstown Publishing) | News (Press Briefing) | 4/17/20 | https://businessjournaldaily.com/state-reports-73-virus-cases-at-area-nursing-homes/ |
| Reporting | Ohio nursing homes had 781 COVID cases while facility-level death data was still not disclosed. | Contemporaneous case-count reporting. | WOSU Public Media | News (Contemporaneous) | 4/23/2020 | https://www.wosu.org/news/2020-04-23/coronavirus-in-ohio-nursing-homes-report-781-cases-but-dont-disclose-deaths |
| Reporting | ODH published a facility-level report of ~840 nursing-home COVID cases, then retracted it after industry objections and admitted data-entry/accuracy problems. | Investigative report on the retracted facility-level report and ODH’s admission of errors. | News 5 Cleveland (WEWS) | News (Investigative) | 4/23/2020 | https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/investigations/state-report-identifies-covid-19-hot-spots-at-ohio-nursing-homes |
| Reporting | Acton agreed to release facility-level data only after weeks of press/records pressure, then had to delete it days later due to inaccuracies. | Investigative reporting documenting ODH’s initial refusal, Acton’s eventual agreement to release data under press pressure, and the data’s swift retraction. | WKYC 3News Investigates | News (Investigative) | 4/24/2020 | https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/investigations/3news-investigates-nursing-home-covid-19-data-still-in-doubt/95-14fba786-a701-4cd3-859b-8c1970f48841 |
| Reporting | By 9/17/20, Ohio still had not disclosed which nursing homes had COVID deaths; DeWine said he would revisit the legal question with ODH attorneys. | Joint investigative feature naming a specific death (Donald Gazaway, Pleasant Ridge Care Center) and quoting DeWine on the disclosure policy. | WCPO 9 / News 5 Cleveland (WEWS); Paula Christian | News (Investigative) | 9/17/20 | https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/which-ohio-nursing-homes-have-had-covid-19-deaths-state-government-refuses-to-tell |
| Reporting | At least 1,246 Ohio LTC residents had died of COVID (~70% of the state total) as of 5/20/20, including 877 deaths reported since mid-April by county only. | AP wire report citing new ODH statistics. | Associated Press (via WKRC/Local 12) | News (Wire/AP) | 5/20/20 | https://local12.com/news/local/nursing-home-deaths-account-for-70-percent-of-ohios-overall-total-ohio-cincinnati |
| Reporting | Acton initially refused to release nursing-home death data citing Ohio public-records law and told county agencies to do the same; records released 4/15 were fraught with errors. | Investigative feature summarizing 3News’ monthslong effort to obtain the data and the state’s reversal. | WKYC (3News Investigates) | News (Investigative) | 5/21/20 | https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/3news-investigates-70-of-ohios-covid-19-deaths-are-nursing-home-patients/95-0287fad5-d13c-4730-bc7b-1e2b9c5e73f9 |
| Reporting | At least 1,641 Ohio nursing-home/LTC residents had died of COVID (~70% of the state total) as of early June 2020, as the industry pushed for lawsuit immunity. | Independent death-count reporting cited in a feature on the industry’s liability-shield lobbying. | Ohio Capital Journal (citing Cleveland.com) | News (Investigative) | 6/5/2020 | https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2020/06/05/as-1600-residents-die-the-nursing-home-industry-fights-for-lawsuit-protections/ |
| Reporting | Months later, Ohio was still keeping nursing-home outbreak site information secret, prompting continued public-records pressure. | Investigative report on continued facility-level non-disclosure. | Cincinnati.com / USA Today Network – Ohio | News (Investigative) | 8/14/2020 | https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/08/14/coronavirus-ohio-nursing-homes-state-keeps-sites-secret/3333748001/ |
| Reporting | WCPO filed a formal public-records complaint after ODH refused to release nursing-home death totals by facility. | News report on the filing of WCPO’s Ohio Court of Claims complaint. | WCPO 9 (I-Team) | News (Investigative) | 2020 | https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/wcpo-files-complaint-asking-ohio-officials-to-release-names-of-nursing-homes-with-covid-deaths |
| Reporting | Special Master Jeff Clark ruled ODH committed a “per se violation” of the Public Records Act by withholding nursing-home COVID death data. | News report and companion video on the special master’s April 2021 ruling. | WCPO 9 (I-Team); Paula Christian | News (Investigative) | 4/7/21 | https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/odh-broke-state-public-records-law-by-not-releasing-nursing-home-covid-deaths-special-master-rules |
| Reporting | Same claim as above, in video form: Ohio kept nursing-home COVID death locations secret; special master ruled ODH violated public-records law. | News broadcast video with on-camera attorney and family-member interviews. | WCPO 9 (YouTube) | Video (News Broadcast) | 4/7/21 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cabAG66wqw |
| Reporting | As litigation moved to the Tenth District Court of Appeals (one of five parallel Ohio public-records cases), ODH had spent $45,000+ in legal fees fighting disclosure. | News report with on-record quotes from WCPO’s and a parallel plaintiff’s attorneys, plus updated death-toll figures. | WCPO 9 (I-Team); Paula Christian | News (Investigative) | 11/17/21 | https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/ohio-has-spent-more-than-45k-to-fight-wcpos-request-for-nursing-home-deaths-to-be-made-public |
| Reporting | The Tenth District Court of Appeals affirmed ODH violated public-records law; ordered aggregate death data released; ODH had spent $56,000+ in fees. | News report on Judge William Klatt’s June 2022 opinion, naming the specific facility in WCPO’s litigation. | WCPO 9 (I-Team); Paula Christian | News (Investigative) | 6/3/22 | https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/appeals-court-ohio-broke-public-records-law-by-not-releasing-nursing-home-covid-deaths |
| Reporting | Same claim as above (unconfirmed pairing): Tenth District appeals-court ruling coverage. | Video presumed to be a companion to the 6/3/22 WCPO appeals-court article; title/content not independently confirmed (fetch attempt failed). | WCPO 9 (YouTube) | Video (unconfirmed) | ~6/22 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbVliBbaGYs |