Citing current patterns of COVID-19 infection rates at nursing homes, the leader of the nation’s largest post-acute and long-term care association on Wednesday warned against states opening their economies too early — a move that he said could only worsen the crisis. “We are very concerned about states opening up too early for this simple […]
Category: Medicare
Prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, skilled nursing facilities that specialize in post-acute care were a rare target of true investor excitement in the greater institutional senior care continuum. With a shiny new Medicare payment model that gave providers more financial credit for the high-acuity services they’d increasingly added over the years, and […]
Citing the steady release of grant money from the dedicated health care stimulus fund, the federal government on Sunday announced the immediate suspension of a program that provided advances of Medicare Part A and B reimbursements. The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) halted the Advance Payment Program and indicated its intention to “reevaluate” […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Friday released a public database of staffing and resident counts for nearly 15,000 nursing homes, with the goal of potentially helping states make more informed decisions about the distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Using fourth-quarter 2019 data from the Payroll-Based Journal […]
Skilled nursing operators may have woken up Friday morning with another unexpected cash injection from the federal government, but nursing homes that rely primarily on Medicaid are still waiting for their share of the pie. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Friday began sending out the last $20 billion chunk of a […]
Nursing homes will soon have to start reporting all positive COVID-19 cases to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – and could face civil monetary penalties (CMPs) for not meeting the reporting requirements. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Seema Verma said on a Monday morning call with reporters that skilled […]
As the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. continues to climb, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a way to increase reporting on outbreaks in skilled nursing facilities, CMS administrator Seema Verma said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. […]
Over the course of decades, lawmakers have built a jury-rigged structure to support the American post-acute and long-term care landscape. At the base, Medicaid supports long-term care residents who can no longer live on their own without around-the-clock care. Medicare dollars pay for higher-acuity care that seniors require after hospital stays — and prop up […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will increase its reimbursements for high-volume lab tests used to rapidly diagnose COVID-19 cases as part of the federal government’s push to expand testing access — particularly among the vulnerable skilled nursing population, the agency announced Wednesday. The reimbursement for COVID-19 diagnostic lab tests that use certain […]
Problems with securing sufficient quantities of personal protective equipment (PPE) span the health care continuum, but in the skilled nursing setting, many providers are grappling with severe shortages — even as they try to contain a contagious disease that presents unique dangers to their patient population. Widespread shortages of masks and gowns, coupled with a […]
Late last week, some operators of skilled nursing facilities — along with many other providers that perform Medicare-reimbursed health care services — woke up to a sudden influx of cash in their corporate bank accounts. But they may not necessarily be able to keep it. Without much fanfare, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services […]
The federal government late Friday released its proposed rule for skilled nursing facility payments for the coming fiscal year, which will see the nation’s nursing homes receive a 2.3% Medicare pay bump. “This estimated increase is attributable to a 2.7% market basket increase factor with a 0.4 percentage point reduction for multifactor productivity adjustment,” the […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Thursday suspended several rules with the goal of maximizing the frontline healthcare workforce during the COVID-19 emergency, with the result that nurse practitioners can now perform some medical exams in the skilled nursing setting. “It’s all hands on deck during this crisis,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma […]
One of most important weapons for fighting the novel coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. is also one of the most glaring gaps in the country’s health system: a lack of rapid, widespread testing for COVID-19. Nowhere does the testing shortage have as much destructive potential as in the skilled nursing setting, where the virus can […]
The federal government this week announced that hospitals and other Medicare-reimbursed health care providers will receive the first disbursements from a $100 billion emergency COVID-19 stimulus fund. For skilled nursing facilities that primarily derive their income from Medicare, the windfall could be significant. “We estimate an allocation of about $1.5 billion to skilled nursing based […]
The federal government has already signed off on nearly $34 billion in advance Medicare payments to providers as part of a program intended to help operators weather temporary financial disruptions amid the spread of COVID-19. Initially announced on March 28, the Accelerated and Advanced Payment Program has already seen 25,000 applications, the Centers for Medicare […]
As the chief medical officer for publicly traded nursing home giant Genesis HealthCare (NYSE: GEN), Dr. Richard Feifer has a bird’s-eye view on the strategies that hundreds of individual nursing homes have implemented in the fight against COVID-19. Appearing on the most recent episode of SNN’s “Rethink” podcast, Feifer was blunt about the decisions that […]
Multiple managed care plans have made changes to their procedures for admissions to the skilled nursing setting amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with several major companies suspending prior authorization requirements for admissions to a skilled nursing facility. The changes, however, are not uniform — and that’s if the managed care organization (MCO) chooses to make […]
The new Medicare payment model for nursing homes was designed to eliminate the temptation to make key care decisions based solely on reimbursements, and not on individual residents’ needs. Though the early results from the Patient-Driven Payment Model (PDPM) have largely been positive for the industry, a group of researchers this week raised concerns about […]
The federal government on Saturday announced a plan to offer advance Medicare fee-for-service payments, as well as accelerated reimbursements, to all Medicare Part A and B providers. Under the terms of the emergency action, most providers who bill under Medicare Parts A and B can request up to 100% of their Medicare payment for a […]
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