Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Hospitals Granted 'Unprecedented Flexibility' As CMS Relaxes Safety Rules Around Treating Patients
The New York Times: Hospital Safety Rules Are Relaxed To Fight Coronavirus
The federal government announced Monday that it was relaxing many of its usual safety standards for hospitals so they could expand services to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is changing rules on what counts as a hospital bed; how closely certain medical professionals need to be supervised; and what kinds of health care can be delivered at home. These broad but temporary changes will last the length of the national emergency. “This is unprecedented flexibility,” said Seema Verma, the administrator for the centers, in an interview. (Sanger-Katz, 3/30)
Modern Healthcare: CMS Eases Requirements For Transferring Non-COVID-19 Infected Patients
During a White House Rose Garden event, CMS Administrator Seema Verma unveiled the hospitals without walls program. "Under the CMS's temporary new rules, hospitals will be able to transfer patients to outside facilities, such as ambulatory surgery centers, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, hotels, and dormitories, while still receiving hospital payments under Medicare. For example, a healthcare system can use a hotel to take care of patients needing less intensive care while using its inpatient beds for COVID-19 patients," CMS noted in a press release. (Weinstock, 3/30)
Kaiser Health News: More Than 5,000 Surgery Centers Can Now Serve As Makeshift Hospitals During COVID-19 Crisis
The Trump administration cleared the way Monday to immediately use outpatient surgery centers, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, hotels and even dormitories as makeshift hospitals, health care centers or quarantine sites during the coronavirus crisis. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced it is temporarily waiving a range of rules, thereby allowing doctors to care for more patients. (Szabo and Anthony, 3/30)
In other news from CMS —
Medscape: CMS To Front Medicare Payments To Physicians For 3 Months
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is expanding a program of accelerated and advance provider payments normally used during natural disasters to supplement the cash flow of Medicare participating healthcare providers and suppliers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The program expansion was made possible by the recently enacted $2. 2 trillion federal rescue package known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. (Terry, 3/30)
Stateline: Coronavirus And The States: Medicaid Waivers Offer Flexibility; Top Officials Clash
The federal agency overseeing Medicaid has moved quickly to grant applications from 34 states to exempt them from several Medicaid rules in order to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. The states received exemptions from some or all of the same handful of rules. (Ollove, 3/30)
Modern Healthcare: COVID-19 Could Slow Payers' Movement Toward Interoperability Compliance
The CMS' interoperability rule, released earlier this month, includes a host of deadlines related to data-sharing, spanning from later this year to 2022. One of the main provisions is that CMS-regulated insurers like those with Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care offerings will be required to get processes up and running so that beneficiaries can download claims and encounter data using third-party apps. To do that, insurers will have to implement application programming interfaces—better known as APIs—by January 2021, just over nine months from when the final rules were released. (Cohen, 3/27)
