Congress reached an agreement on a new COVID-19 relief package on Sunday, but for skilled nursing providers, the measures in the bill are at best a preliminary step toward the aid necessary for them to survive the aftershocks of a grueling year. The bill, which runs to almost 6,000 pages and had not been finalized […]
LeadingAge
The emergency use authorization (EUA) granted to Pfizer’s (NYSE: PFE) COVID-19 vaccine late on Friday launched a flurry of promises and commitments to get the vaccine out to vulnerable long-term care residents as quickly as possible. Alex Azar, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) suggested on Sunday in an interview […]
Nursing home and senior living providers in the not-for-profit sector are facing significant strains from the surge in COVID-19 nationwide. Leading into the Thanksgiving holiday, operators are pleading with those in the community to refrain from gathering amid challenges both operational and financial. “Nursing homes really are at the brink,” Deke Cateau, the CEO of […]
About a quarter of nursing homes have seen at least one false positive COVID-19 result during an ongoing federal push to provide point-of-care antigen testing at most facilities across the country, according to an industry-led survey. “We found that about 20-25 percent of SNFs had a positive antigen test result later found to be incorrect […]
Becton Dickinson, which manufactures one of two point-of-care COVID-19 testing models that the federal government has sent directly to nursing homes, is investigating claims of false positives in the long-term care setting, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. The American Health Care Association, which represents more than 14,000 primarily for-profit nursing facilities across the […]
The COVID-19 pandemic blindsided the skilled nursing sector when it hit in late winter and early spring this year, but the field has to be willing to acknowledge pre-existing problems with infection control and make changes accordingly. That’s according to Mark Parkinson, the leader of the nursing home trade group the American Health Care Association […]
The federal government last week cracked down on COVID-19 testing in nursing homes, with a host of new fines exceeding $8,000 per instance, but some industry leaders — and a prominent geriatrician — have raised concerns about whether providers can meet the new benchmarks, or whether the plan will have the intended effects. “You cannot […]
With COVID-19 forcing skilled nursing facilities to drastically restrict visitation, technology and virtual communication have emerged as critical tools to maintain social ties between residents and their loved ones. And there are federal funds — collected from facilities deemed to have run afoul of various rules — available to help SNFs bolster their technological offerings. […]
COVID-19 testing devices are shipping out to skilled nursing facilities across the U.S, but questions remain for many providers about how those devices are being distributed — and whether the supply lines for the test kits can keep up with the demand as SNFs try to meet testing mandates. The testing initiative, announced by the […]
The U.S. has begun to take tentative steps towards reopening, with states moving at their own pace out of the COVID-19-induced lockdowns — raising concerns about the risks of a possible second surge of cases. But LeadingAge, which represents non-profit senior housing and care providers, warned starkly on Wednesday that senior living and skilled nursing […]
One thousand cloth masks, possibly made from T-shirts, arriving in an unmarked box with no return address. Plastic gowns, similar to trash bags, too large for a nurse to wear. Shipments with far fewer masks and gowns than a facility uses in a single week — with no hand sanitizer, N95 masks, or face shields […]
Senior housing and care leaders again called on the federal government to more aggressively bankroll COVID-19 testing in the nation’s nursing homes, arguing that the burden will be ongoing — especially since an already expensive one-time testing strategy may not be an instant cure-all. Given recommendations from the White House and Centers for Medicare & […]
LeadingAge CEO Katie Smith Sloan has been outspoken in her calls for increased government support for nursing homes and other senior care providers amid the COVID-19 crisis. As the case count continues to rise and operators face down a new normal with coronavirus at the center of every decision they make, Sloan has loudly and […]
The federal government last week cautiously began laying formal groundwork for reopening the nation’s nursing homes, which have been under COVID-19 lockdown orders since the middle of March. But many experts both inside and outside the industry have asserted that nursing facilities can’t even think about returning to normalcy without substantially more financial and material […]
When Congress set aside $175 billion in aid for health care facilities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal agencies in charge of doling out those dollars elected to prioritize speed over structure, sending cash influxes directly to providers with little advance warning or fanfare. On one level, this strategy makes sense. In the midst […]
With personal protective equipment (PPE) in short supply across the country, skilled nursing facilities have felt left out in efforts to bolster health care capacity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic — even though by most measures, they are arguably on the front lines of the battle to contain the illness caused by the […]
Skilled nursing operators across the U.S. are grappling with the challenge of caring for patients most vulnerable to COVID-19 while staying on top of a variety of state and federal guidelines. To do that without getting overwhelmed, it’s critical to have all the various components of an operation working together — and for operators with […]
Health care providers across the continuum have grappled with major challenges in providing care for patients with COVID-19, and several states have taken steps to shield them from lawsuits related to care provided during the national emergency. Skilled nursing facilities are often included in those liability protections, but the extent to which the protections apply […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) could formally release new COVID-19 reporting guidelines for nursing homes as soon as this week, sources told the Wall Street Journal Sunday. The publication had few other details about the exact scope of a potential CMS order, with a spokesperson telling the Wall Street Journal that “the […]
A group of nursing home residents at The Resort at Texas City, which had more than 80 residents and staffers test positive for COVID-19, are being treated with an antimalarial drug that has made headlines as a possible treatment for the illness, though its efficacy remains untested and unproven in formal clinical trials. The Texas […]
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