On April 19th, under the leadership of
President Trump, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
announced new
regulatory requirements that will require nursing homes to inform
residents, their families and representatives of COVID-19 cases in their
facilities. In addition, as part of President Trump’s Opening Up America,
CMS will now require nursing homes to report cases of COVID-19 directly to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This information must
be reported in accordance with existing privacy regulations and statute.
This measure augments longstanding requirements for reporting infectious
disease to State and local health departments. Finally, CMS will also
require nursing homes to fully cooperate with CDC surveillance efforts
around COVID-19 spread.
CDC will be providing a reporting
tool to nursing homes that will support Federal efforts to collect
nationwide data to assist in COVID-19 surveillance and response. This joint
effort is a result of the CMS-CDC Work Group on Nursing Home Safety. CMS
plans to make the data publicly available. This effort builds on recent
recommendations from the American
Health Care
Association and Leading Age, two large nursing home
industry associations, that nursing homes quickly report COVID-19 cases.
This data sharing project is only the
most recent in the Trump Administration’s rapid and aggressive response to
the COVID-19 pandemic. More details are available in the Press
Release and Guidance
Memo.
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