- Eight Hospitals Selected for First Cohort of Rural Hospital Stabilization Program
- Announcing the 2030 Census Disclosure Avoidance Research Program
- CMS: Medicare Program; Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals and the Long-Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System and Policy Changes and Fiscal Year 2026 Rates; Requirements for Quality Programs; and Other Policy Changes; Correction
- CMS: Medicare Program; Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals and the Long-Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System and Policy Changes and Fiscal Year 2026 Rates; Requirements for Quality Programs; and Other Policy Changes; Correction
- CMS: Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Contract Year 2026 Policy and Technical Changes to the Medicare Advantage Program, Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program, Medicare Cost Plan Program, and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly; Correction
- CMS: Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Contract Year 2026 Policy and Technical Changes to the Medicare Advantage Program, Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program, Medicare Cost Plan Program, and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly; Correction
- 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
- CMS: Medicare and Medicaid Programs; CY 2025 Payment Policies Under the Physician Fee Schedule and Other Changes to Part B Payment and Coverage Policies; Medicare Shared Savings Program Requirements; Medicare Prescription Drug Inflation Rebate Program; and Medicare Overpayments; and Appeal Rights for Certain Changes in Patient Status; Corrections and Correcting Amendment
- CMS: Medicare and Medicaid Programs; CY 2025 Payment Policies Under the Physician Fee Schedule and Other Changes to Part B Payment and Coverage Policies; Medicare Shared Savings Program Requirements; Medicare Prescription Drug Inflation Rebate Program; and Medicare Overpayments; and Appeal Rights for Certain Changes in Patient Status; Corrections and Correcting Amendment
- VA: Staff Sergeant Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program Funding Opportunity
- State: 60-Day Notice of Proposed Information Collection: J-1 Visa Waiver Recommendation Application
CMS NEWS ALERT – May 6, 2020
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released an Interim Final Rule with Comment Period (IFC) building on the agency’s efforts to give the American healthcare system maximum flexibility to respond to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Below is a summary of resources and information available on the rule. View the full rule here.
For more information on the White House Task Force response to COVID-19, visit www.coronavirus.gov. Additional information specific to CMS is available at the CMS News Room and Current Emergencies Website.
Press Release: Trump Administration Issues Second Round of Sweeping Changes to Support U.S. Healthcare System During COVID-19 Pandemic
The IFC outlines actions CMS is taking to ensure states and localities have the flexibilities they need to ramp up diagnostic testing and access to medical care, key precursors to ensuring a phased, safe, and gradual reopening of America. Read the press release and fact sheet for more details.
Fact Sheets
CMS has updated multiple fact sheets that summarize changes made through regulatory actions in response to COVID-19. View more resources available on CMS waivers and flexibilities here.
A full list of emergency declaration blanket waivers for health care providers implemented to date is available here. Additional fact sheets include:
- Clinicians:
- Hospitals and Facilities:
- Hospitals (PDF)
- Teaching Hospitals, Teaching Physicians and Medical Residents (PDF)
- Long Term Care Facilities (Skilled Nursing Facilities and/or Nursing Facilities) (PDF)
- Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) (PDF)
- Long Term Care Hospitals & Extended Neoplastic Disease Care Hospitals (PDF)
- Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities (PDF)
- End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Facilities (PDF)
- Service providers:
- Other CMS Programs:
Laboratory and Testing and Resources
CMS is committed to taking critical steps to ensure America’s clinical laboratories can respond to the threat of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses to ensure patient health and safety.
CMS Hospitals without Walls Initiative
CMS is allowing healthcare systems and hospitals to provide services in locations beyond their existing walls to help address the urgent need to expand care capacity and to develop sites dedicated to COVID-19 treatment.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Several changes in the IFC allow additional Medicare payment; CMS has issued FAQs addressing Medicare Fee-for-Service Billing issues.
Additional Resources for Stakeholders
CMS has developed a toolkit for stakeholder partners to help you stay informed on CMS and HHS materials available on COVID-19. Check back often for the most up-to-date information; please refresh your browser often to see the most up-to-date information.
Upcoming COVID-19 Stakeholder Calls
Conference lines are limited, so we highly encourage you to join via audio webcast, either on your computer or smartphone web browser. You are welcome to share this invitation with your colleagues and membership.
To listen to the audio files and read the transcripts for the COVID-19 Stakeholder calls, visit the Podcast and Transcripts page.
CMS COVID-19 Office Hours Call – Thursday, May 7th at 5:00 – 6:00 PM Eastern
Toll Free Attendee Dial-In: 833-614-0820; Access Passcode: 1181167
Lessons from the Front Lines – Friday, May 8th at 12:30 – 2:00 PM Eastern
Toll Free Attendee Dial-In: 877-251-0301; Access Code: 9146779
Rural Pennsylvania: This Working Man Was Ready to Retire. But the Virus Took Him
HAZLETON, Pa. — Just off Wyoming Street in Pennsylvania’s hilly, working-class city of Hazleton, Laury Sorensen and her husband, Emil, lugged groceries from a pickup truck upstairs to her parents’ wood-frame home.
They sought to spare Ms. Sorensen’s father, Rafael Benjamin, a trip to the supermarket in a time of infectious plague. He ran enough risk working for Cargill Meat Solutions in an industrial park outside the city.
The Pennsylvania governor had issued a shutdown order but exempted Cargill, which packages meat in plastic wrap. Mr. Benjamin, a good-natured man who rarely missed a day of work, said colleagues labored shoulder to shoulder in March without masks and gloves, and he worried it had become a petri dish for sickness.
A few days later, Mr. Benjamin could not come to the phone. “He got sick on Tuesday,” his son-in-law texted. “He’s on a respirator.”
Then another text: “He was six days from retirement.”
This is the tale of the virus as it swept down Wyoming Street in a city of 25,000 tucked into the wooded, still-leafless foothills of the Poconos. Five days spent along a few blocks of old, worn rowhouses and storefronts revealed the virus to be all around. All anyone spoke about was the people falling ill.
‘It’s Gone Haywire’: When COVID-19 Arrived in Rural America
DAWSON, Ga. (AP) — The reverend approached the makeshift pulpit and asked the Lord to help him make some sense of the scene before him: two caskets, side by side, in a small-town cemetery busier now than ever before.
Rev. Willard O. Weston had already eulogized other neighbors lost to COVID-19, and he would do more. But this one stood as a symbol to him of all they had lost. The pair of caskets, one powder blue, one white and gold, contained a couple married 30 years who died two days apart, at separate hospitals hours from each other, unaware of the other’s fate.
The day was dark. There was no wind, not even a breeze. It felt to some like the earth had paused for this.
As the world’s attention was fi
xated on the horrors in Italy and New York City, the per capita death rates in counties in the impoverished southwest corner of Georgia climbed to among the worst in the country. The devastation here is a cautionary tale of what happens when the virus seeps into communities that have for generations remained on the losing end of the nation’s most intractable inequalities: these counties are rural, mostly African American and poor.
New Penn State COVID-19 Report on Essential Work
The Penn State Institute of State and Regional Affairs (ISRA) released today the second installment of the COVID-19 Report Series: Employment Risk, quantifying the extent of establishments and employment effected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of non-essential businesses.
The report uses current definitions for essential businesses paired with data on establishments, employment, and unemployment claims to assess the economic impact of the pandemic in Pennsylvania.
The key findings include:
- At least 1.2 million employees worked in industries impacted by business establishment closures.
- Over the four-week period from March 21 through April 4, nearly 1.7 million unemployment claims were filed.
Click here to read the latest report from ISRA’s COVID-19 Report Series for additional details on trends at the sector and county levels.
USDA Announces Additional Food Purchase Plans
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced details of $470 million in Section 32 food purchases to occur in the third quarter of fiscal year 2020, in addition to purchases previously announced, which will enable USDA to purchase surplus food for distribution to communities nationwide. These Section 32 purchases will provide additional support for producers and Americans in need, in response to changing market conditions caused by the COVID-19 national emergency.
Using these available funds, USDA plans to purchase 100 percent American-grown and produced agricultural products totaling $4.89 billion for the remainder of this fiscal year in support of American agriculture and people in need:
- Farmers to Families Food Box Program– $3 billion
- TEFAP – Additional $850 million
Support Program for Farmers- $573.6 million
COVID-19 Resources for Farmers & Ag Workers with Disabilities & Health Conditions
The National AgrAbility Project has for assembled a page of resources, referrals, and links related to COVD-19 to support the farmers, agricultural workers, and the professionals who are working with them during this pandemic. It is a great place to find specific information connected to the work of farmers with disabilities or health conditions.
Please share additional suggestions for this page to: agrability@agrability.org
Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act, Title V)
Last week, states received a minimum of $1.25 billion from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act, Title V) to use at their discretion to address issues related to the pandemic. These dollars may be used to fund necessary COVID-19-related expenses that have not been addressed in their most recently passed state budgets and are limited to expenses that occur between March 1 to Dec. 30, 2020.
To make funding decisions amid many competing priorities, states could benefit from a snapshot showing all federal coronavirus relief funds that have already been received by hospitals and their affiliates within their states. It remains unclear if and when the federal government will make such information available and whether that data will be by hospital.
The National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), in consultation with state officials, has drafted a template that states can use or revise to seek timely information detailing which hospitals are already receiving federal coronavirus relief funds. The template seeks information about hospitals and their affiliates, which can include labs, physician practices, rural health and behavioral health clinics, surgery centers, and nursing homes.
Rural Matters Podcast: Rural Health during the Pandemic with NRHA’s Alan Morgan
In the most recent episode of Rural Matters, host Michelle Rathman chats with Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, about the impact of COVID-19 on rural health.
Pennsylvania Is the State with the 5th Most Coronavirus Restrictions – WalletHub Study
With some states beginning to open up for business and relax limitations put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on the States with the Fewest Coronavirus Restrictions, as well as accompanying videos.
To identify which states have the fewest coronavirus restrictions, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 9 key metrics. Our data set ranges from limits on large gatherings to the presence of a “shelter-in-place” order and whether restaurants and bars have reopened. Below, you can see highlights from the report, along with a WalletHub Q&A.
Coronavirus Restrictions in Pennsylvania (1=Fewest, 25=Avg.):
- 31st – Requirement to Wear a Face Mask in Public
- 29th – Travel Restrictions
- 39th – Large Gatherings Restrictions
- 24th – “Shelter in Place” Order
- 35th – Reopening of Non-Essential Businesses
- 18th – Reopening of Restaurants and Bars
Note: Rankings are based on data available as of 12:30 p.m. ET on Monday, May 4, 2020.
For the full report, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-fewest-coronavirus-restrictions/73818/
Pennsylvania Governor Provides Business Guidance as Counties Move to Yellow Phase on May 8
To continue to limit the spread of COVID-19, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf today provided guidance that details procedures businesses must follow to conduct in-person operations in counties slated to move to the yellow phase of reopening on May 8. All businesses, including non-profits, permitted to conduct in-person operations are subject to this guidance. This guidance is based on the building safety and business safety orders, under which nearly all life-sustaining businesses have been operating during the red phase.
Under the yellow phase of reopening, life-sustaining businesses that could not conduct either all or part of their operations via telework will continue to conduct their operations in-person, and many non-life sustaining businesses will be permitted to restart their in-person operations through the loosening of some restrictions under the stay-at-home and business closure orders.
In counties that have been designated as in the yellow phase, all businesses, except those categories specifically listed as remaining closed in the governor’s Plan to Reopen Pennsylvania, are permitted to conduct in-person operations, as long as they strictly adhere to the requirements of the guidance.
The guidance includes specific information on cleaning and disinfecting premises, limiting the number of employees in common areas and customers on premises, providing masks and sanitizing supplies for employees, installing shields or other barriers at registers and checkout areas to physically separate cashiers and customers, and creating a plan in case a business is exposed to a probable or confirmed case of COVID-19, among other provisions.