- CMS: Medicare Program; Prospective Payment System and Consolidated Billing for Skilled Nursing Facilities; Updates to the Quality Reporting Program for Federal Fiscal Year 2026
- CMS: Medicare Program; FY 2026 Hospice Wage Index and Payment Rate Update and Hospice Quality Reporting Program Requirements
- Public Inspection: CMS: Medicare Program: Prospective Payment System and Consolidated Billing for Skilled Nursing Facilities; Updates to the Quality Reporting Program for Federal Fiscal Year 2026
- Public Inspection: CMS: Medicare Program: Fiscal Year 2026 Hospice Wage Index and Payment Rate Update and Hospice Quality Reporting Program Requirements
- CMS: Request for Information; Health Technology Ecosystem
- VA: Staff Sergeant Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program Funding Opportunity
- State: 60-Day Notice of Proposed Information Collection: J-1 Visa Waiver Recommendation Application
- Public Inspection: CMS: Request for Information: Health Technology Ecosystem
- HHS: Request for Information (RFI): Ensuring Lawful Regulation and Unleashing Innovation To Make American Healthy Again
- VA: Solicitation of Nominations for the Appointment to the Advisory Committee on Tribal and Indian Affairs
- GAO Seeks New Members for Tribal and Indigenous Advisory Council
- VA: Staff Sergeant Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program Funding Opportunity
- Telehealth Study Recruiting Veterans Now
- USDA Delivers Immediate Relief to Farmers, Ranchers and Rural Communities Impacted by Recent Disasters
- Submit Nominations for Partnership for Quality Measurement (PQM) Committees
Cities with the Biggest Growth in Unemployment Due to COVID-19 – WalletHub Study
With over 22 million jobs wiped out so far during the COVID-19 pandemic, WalletHub today released its report on the Cities with the Biggest Growth in Unemployment Due to COVID-19, along with accompanying videos.
In order to identify where workers have been most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, WalletHub compared 180 cities based on how their unemployment rate has changed over time. We compared unemployment during the latest month for which we have data (March 2020) to March 2019 and January 2020 in order to see the difference from the beginning of the year and from last year. Below, you can see highlights from the report, along with a WalletHub Q&A.
|
Most Affected Cities |
|
| 1. Seattle, WA | 11. Reno, NV |
| 2. Hialeah, FL | 12. Dover, DE |
| 3. North Las Vegas, NV | 13. Orlando, FL |
| 4. Miami, FL | 14. Port St. Lucie, FL |
| 5. Henderson, NV | 15. Salt Lake City, UT |
| 6. Las Vegas, NV | 16. Long Beach, CA |
| 7. Aurora, CO | 17. Santa Clarita, CA |
| 8. Denver, CO | 18. Los Angeles, CA |
| 9. Cleveland, OH | 19. Chicago, IL |
| 10. Colorado Springs, CO | 20. Fort Lauderdale, FL |
To view the full report and your city’s rank, please visit: https://wallethub.com/edu/cities-with-the-biggest-growth-in-unemployment-due-to-covid-19/73647/
Major-City Growth Slows, but That Doesn’t Mean a Rural Rebound
By Bill Bishop and Roberto Gallardo
Nearly 1.9 million people moved out of the central parts of major cities from 2010 to 2019. But they only got as far as the suburbs.
One of the undeniable facts of the past decade is that the nation’s biggest cities had the biggest gains in population.
But demographer Bill Frey has noticed a recent kink in the inexorable growth of the giant metropolitan areas, those with a million or more people. In a recent report for the Brookings Institution, Frey writes that “growth has diminished in recent years” in the nation’s largest cities.
“Major metropolitan areas with populations exceeding one million sustained the biggest growth slowdowns and, in several cases, population losses over the last four years, as have the urban cores within them,” Frey writes.
Does this mean there has been yet another “rural rebound,” with people fleeing cities for the countryside?
Rural Hospitals Worry $10 Billion Infusion from CARES Act Just a ‘Band-Aid’
By Liz Carey
As financial aid for hospitals begins to be deployed across the country, some of the rural administrators worry it’s only a temporary fix, not a long term solution.
Rural Counties Account for Increasing Share of New Covid-19 Cases
By Tim Marema, Bill Bishop and Tim Murphy
The percentage of the nation’s new Covid-19 cases that originated in rural counties more than doubled in the last month. The infection rate in rural counties remains significantly lower than the nation’s overall infection rate. But rural hotspots, plus a gradual increase across most nonmetropolitan counties, is making rural infections a greater share of the nation’s caseload.
HHS Launches COVID-19 Uninsured Program Portal
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has launched a new COVID-19 Uninsured Program Portal, allowing health care providers who have conducted COVID-19 testing or provided treatment for uninsured COVID-19 individuals on or after February 4, 2020 to submit claims for reimbursement. Providers can access the portal at COVIDUninsuredClaim.HRSA.gov.
The Trump Administration is committed to ensuring that individuals are protected against financial obstacles that might prevent them from getting the testing and treatment they need for COVID-19. As part of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, health care providers can request claims reimbursement electronically through the COVID-19 Uninsured Program Portal and receive reimbursement, generally at Medicare rates for testing uninsured individuals for COVID-19 and treating uninsured individuals with a COVID-19 diagnosis.
Health Care Professional Workforce Composition Before and After Rural Hospital Closure
A new rural policy brief is available from the RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis authored by Erin Mobley, PhD; Fred Ullrich, BA; Redwan Bin Abdul Baten, MPH; Mina Shrestha, MPH and Keith Mueller, PhD. This policy brief examines the composition of the local health care workforce before and after rural hospital closure to reveal any associations with discontinuation of inpatient services in rural communities.
Please click here to read the brief.
States Offering the Most Coronavirus Support – WalletHub Study
With 89 percent of adults hospitalized with COVID-19 having some sort of pre-existing condition, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on the States Offering the Most Coronavirus Support, as well as accompanying videos. The report seeks to examine how states care for people who are at risk both health-wise and financially.
To identify which states offer the most support during the COVID-19 pandemic, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 17 key metrics. Our data set ranges from whether the state will offer free vaccinations once a vaccine exists to the share of households in poverty that receive social assistance. Below, you can see highlights from the report, along with a WalletHub Q&A.
|
States with the Most Support |
States with the Least Support |
| 1. Massachusetts | 42. Texas |
| 2. District of Columbia | 43. Tennessee |
| 3. Rhode Island | 44. Florida |
| 4. Maine | 45. Indiana |
| 5. North Dakota | 46. Virginia |
| 6. New Mexico | 47. South Carolina |
| 7. Vermont | 48. Georgia |
| 8. Colorado | 49. Arizona |
| 9. Kentucky | 50. Mississippi |
| 10. Minnesota | 51. North Carolina |
To view the full report and your state’s rank, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-offering-the-most-coronavirus-support/73333/
Pennsylvania Governor Announces May 1 Statewide Reopening of Limited Outdoor Recreational Activities to Help Maintain Positive Physical, Mental Health
To ensure that Pennsylvanians have opportunities to safely enjoy outdoor recreation as a way to maintain positive physical and mental health, and in keeping with the commonwealth’s stay-at-home orders to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Governor Tom Wolf today announced that the Wolf Administration is lifting some restrictions on businesses related to certain outdoor activities.
Starting Friday, May 1, golf courses, marinas, guided fishing trips and privately owned campgrounds may reopen statewide and are required to follow updated life-sustaining business guidance and FAQ issued by the Wolf Administration to include specifics for how these outdoor recreational industries can resume activities while prioritizing public health and safety. Campgrounds in state parks will remain closed through Thursday, May 14.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidance on visiting parks and recreational facilities. These guidelines must be followed statewide by businesses and when engaging in outdoor activity while the state disaster declaration remains in effect. The guidelines will ensure the safety of individuals and families engaging in outdoor activities and adherence will help slow the spread of COVID-19.
- Stay close to home: Pennsylvanians are encouraged to enjoy permitted outdoor recreational activities within their community and avoid crowding popular destinations.
- Practice social distancing: Maintain the recommended minimum 6 feet apart from fellow recreationists. Pennsylvanians are also encouraged to wear a mask or protective garment that covers the nose and mouth any time they go outside. If a parking lot at a park is full or there are too many people on the same trail, find an alternate place to recreate. Cross the street to avoid running directly past another runner or wait longer at a golf hole for a fellow golfer to move forward.
- Minimize risk to others: Individuals should only go out if they feel healthy and have not been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
- Practice good hygiene: Wash hands often with soap and warm water for 20 seconds. If soap and water are not available, use a hand sanitizer containing at least 60 percent alcohol. Avoid surfaces that are touched often, such as doorknobs and handrails.
- Have a plan: Create a safety plan before heading outdoors. Explain to children the need to keep their distance from others, even if they happen to see a friend while outside. Discuss with partners, social distancing while on the golf course. Think through how to avoid other runners when waiting to safely cross a street at the same time.
Policy Brief: Measure and Data Element Identification for the HRSA Evidence-Based Tele-Behavioral Health Network Program and the HRSA Substance Abuse Treatment Telehealth Network Grant Program
A Research & Policy Brief is available from the Rural Telehealth Research Center.
To address the many challenges in treating behavioral health in rural areas, the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) established the Evidence-Based Tele-Behavioral Health Network Program (EB THNP) in 2018, funding 14 grantees, and the Substance Abuse Treatment Telehealth Network Grant Program (SAT TNGP) in 2017, funding 3 grantees. Concurrently, the Rural Telehealth Research Center (RTRC) worked cooperatively with FORHP to establish data collection protocols and tools on a set of measures that could be used for a cross-grantee evaluation of behavioral health services over their funding periods. This brief details multi-project work to identify the standardized set of measures appropriate to behavioral health, create an Excel-based tool – termed the Behavioral-Telehealth Evidence Collection (B-TEC) Tool- and begin to systematically collect data from the grantees.
Please click here to read the brief.
Closed Hospitals Leave Rural Patients ‘Stranded’ as Coronavirus Spreads
New York Times
By Sarah Kliff, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and
Michael Nuzum had spent weeks fighting coronavirus-like symptoms — a wracking cough, terrible chills, an exhausting fever — before collapsing at his home in rural West Virginia.
Mr. Nuzum, a 54-year-old animal control worker, was already in cardiac arrest when the emergency workers arrived on April 3. That left them with a difficult decision: Should they transport their patient to the nearest hospital, 30 minutes away?
“There’s only so much one paramedic can do in the back of an ambulance,” said Michael Angelucci, who leads the Marion County rescue squad that cared for Mr. Nuzum. The two-person team that responded decided it couldn’t risk the long ride and instead tried to revive the patient at the scene. But the workers couldn’t save him.
Two weeks earlier, the options would have been different. Fairmont Regional Medical Center, just five minutes from Mr. Nuzum’s home, would still have been open. Mr. Angelucci, who is also a state representative, can’t help wondering if the hospital and its emergency room could have given the man a fighting chance.
“It’s incredibly frustrating that this entire community is stranded without a hospital,” he said.
Fairmont was one of three hospitals that have shut down in this corner of rural West Virginia and Ohio since September. They delivered hundreds of babies each year, treated car crash and gunshot victims, repaired hearts and knees and offered addiction treatment and psychiatric care.