On May 6, 2020, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed an executive order protecting health care practitioners from liability for good-faith actions taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Click here for more information.
Pennsylvania Governor Creates Commonwealth Civilian Coronavirus Corps
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf is creating the Commonwealth Civilian Coronavirus Corps, a public service initiative that will support efforts in the fall to increase testing and contact tracing and provide critical new job opportunities in the public health sector. The intent is to fund these positions with federal dollars. Read full story.
Economic Blow Of The Coronavirus Hits America’s Already Stressed Farmers
From Kaiser Health News
Richard Oswald, still mourning the loss of his family’s homestead to flooding along the Missouri River, is planting corn and soybeans into ground that last year was feet deep underwater.
It’s probably good, he said, to not have too much time to think.
“Diversion therapy is the best treatment for farmers right now,” said the 70-year-old from Atchison County, Missouri. “Being busy helps.”
In an industry rocked over the past year by record rates of bankruptcies, suicides and mental health crises spurred by weather extremes, trade wars and faltering economics, COVID-19 has fostered even more uncertainty for the future of America’s farms. Already the pandemic has decimated agricultural markets.
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
NRHA’s Rural Horizons | Spring 2020
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.
Cybersecurity Toolkit for Rural Hospitals and Clinics
Ransomware and cybercrime are growing threats to all healthcare facilities, big or small. Protecting a facility from cyber threats can be a daunting task, however, failure to do so can result in fees, fines, litigation, media stories, mistrust, and decreased market capture.
The updated Rural Cybersecurity Toolkit was created by the National Rural Health Resource Center (The Center), and supported by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP). The toolkit is organized into four steps to guide rural hospitals and clinics in developing and fostering a well-rounded cybersecurity program; 1) Awareness, 2) Assessment, 3) Implementation and remediation, and 4) Education. The Toolkit also includes resources from various governmental and non-profit organizations, as well as tools and checklists appropriate for all hospitals and clinics in rural settings.
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