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CMS Ends Emergency Blanket Waivers for Nursing Home Staffing, Attempts to Reduce Clinician Burden and More...

Posted on: 6/30/2020

On June 25, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced plans to end the emergency blanket waiver requiring all nursing homes to resume submitting staffing data through the Payroll-Based Journal system by August 14, 2020. The waiver was intended to temporarily allow the agency to focus efforts during COVID-19 and reduce the administrative burden on nursing homes. The released memorandum also includes updates related to staffing and quality measures

Read the memorandum>>>

Read the press release>>>

On June 25, CMS issues a proposed rule [CMS-1730-P] that proposes routine updates to the home health payment rates for calendar year (CY) 2021, in accordance with existing statutory and regulatory requirements. This proposed rule also includes a proposal to make permanent the regulatory changes related to telecommunications technologies in providing care under the Medicare home health benefit beyond the expiration of the public health emergency (PHE) for the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

This rule includes a proposal to adopt the revised Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statistical area delineations as described in OMB Bulletin 18-04 and proposes to apply a 5 percent cap on wage index decreases in CY 2021. Finally, this rule proposes Medicare enrollment policies for qualified home infusion therapy suppliers and updates the home infusion therapy services payment rates for CY 2021.

In an effort to promote efficiencies, this rule proposes to permanently finalize, beginning January 1, 2021, the amendment to the home health regulations outlined in the March 30, 2020 Policy and Regulatory Revisions in Response to the COVID–19 Public Health Emergency Interim Final Rule (85 FR 19230). This would mean that home health agencies (HHAs) can continue to utilize telecommunications technologies in providing care to beneficiaries under the Medicare home health benefit beyond the COVID-19 PHE, as long as the telecommunications technology is related to the skilled services being furnished, is outlined on the plan of care, and is tied to a specific goal indicating how such use would facilitate treatment outcomes.

Read the proposed rule>>>

On June 23, CMS announced the creation of the Office of Burden Reduction and Health Informatics to unify the agency’s efforts to reduce regulatory and administrative burden and to further the goal of putting patients first. The new office is an outgrowth of the agency’s Patients over Paperwork (PoP) Initiative, which is the cornerstone of CMS’s ongoing efforts to implement President Trump’s 2017 executive order to “Cut the Red Tape” and eliminate duplicative, unnecessary, and excessively costly requirements and regulations. This announcement permanently embeds a culture of burden reduction across all platforms of CMS agency operations.

Additionally, the Office of Burden Reduction and Health Informatics will focus on the important work of health informatics, which uses and applies health data and clinical information to provide better healthcare to patients. Fostering innovation through interoperability will be an important priority, and the office will leverage technology and automation to create new tools that allow patients to own and carry their personal health data with them seamlessly, privately, and securely throughout the health care system.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and our ACMA advocacy firm Lobbyit contributed to this information.

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