State Rep. Mark Baisley (R-Roxborough Park) issued a formal letter to request an investigation into alleged falsified death records done to inflate the state's COVID-19 death totals, KUSA-TV reported.
Baisley alleged in the letter that Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) Executive Director Jill Ryan was falsely altering death certificates and then reporting those deaths as coronavirus deaths.
“Falsely inflating the number of deaths due to COVID-19 adversely impacts the professional reputation of nursing homes, hospitals and health care workers while creating undue fear for families,” Baisley wrote in his letter, the news agency reported.
Baisley's letter also included a second letter attached, which was from the Someren Glen Senior Living Community that was sent to staff, residents and family members regarding CPDHE overriding cause of death findings by attending physicians in seven separate cases, the news agency reported.
“We have never seen a situation where the health department overrules a physician’s findings,” the news agency reported the letter stated. “However, these are unprecedented times and the health department officials did not share their motivation for changing physician’s orders.”
CDPHE told the news agency in a statement that it was using a national standard accepted by the Centers for Disease Control that stated that if the person who died was currently infected by the coronavirus, they were classified as a coronavirus death.
Gov. Jared Polis changed that method last week, stating that going forward, if someone died of something else, but currently had coronavirus, their deaths would be recorded separately from those deaths caused by coronavirus, the news agency reported.
The news agency reported that with that new protocol, deaths for the state are listed as 1,150 residents dying with coronavirus, while 878 of those deaths were because of coronavirus.
"What the people of Colorado want to know is not who died with COVID, but who died of COVID-19," Polis said in a press conference, the news agency reported. "I've told [CDPHE] to make sure they're very clear in their reporting."
