Nursing Home Reporting Requirement
On April 19, CMS announced we’ll be requiring facilities to report COVID-19
information to the CDC and to families. Within three weeks of that
announcement, we published an Interim Final Rule With Comment on April 30. For
the first time, all 15,000 nursing homes will be reporting this data directly
to the CDC through its reporting tool. With the new regulatory requirements,
nursing homes are
required
to report
the first week of data to the CDC beginning May 8 but no later than May 17.
Additionally, in order to report, facilities must enroll in the CDC’s National
Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). Information on how to enroll is available
here.
As nursing homes report this data to the CDC,
we will be taking swift action and publicly posting this information so all
Americans have access to accurate and timely information on COVID-19 in nursing
homes.
More
information on the COVID-19 NHSN module can be found
here.
CMS has a longstanding
requirement for nursing homes to report cases of communicable diseases, such as
COVID-19, to the appropriate state or local health department. This new
requirement not only helps health departments intervene when needed, but serves
to provide awareness to the public (e.g., families), and surveillance for
public health agencies and the CDC. The importance of ongoing transparency and
information sharing has proven to be one of the keys to the battle against this
pandemic. Building upon the successes of this Administration prior to COVID-19,
CMS has strongly supported transparency, such as the work done over the past
several years to improve public access and understanding of nursing home
inspection reports and expand the information available to consumers on Nursing
Home Compare. The agency remains committed to greater transparency, and
plans to publicly release the new data by the end of May. CMS will never
stop working to give patients, residents, and families the clearest and most
accurate information possible.Centers
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