Mandatory staffing minimums at nursing homes were officially repealed in an interim final rule published last week.
The rule had already been struck down by a federal court in April and was placed under a moratorium until 2034 by President Donald Trump's landmark spending reform bill earlier this year. Modern Healthcare reports that...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not come to play this week when they filed 75,000 pages of records in response to a lawsuit brought against the nursing home staffing mandate.
This was the opening move by CMS since the American Health Care Association (AHCA) filed suit against the mandate earlier this year. According...CMS Rules
Nursing home advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration's federal staffing minimum rule, which was promised in the wake of the devastation in nursing homes and exacerbation of nursing staff shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It should come as no surprise that the American Health Care Association...
The Biden administration finalized federal staffing requirements for nursing homes on Monday. The rule requires a registered nurse be on site 24 hours a day and enough staff to provide each patient with 3.48 hours of care per day which is higher than was originally proposed.
For facilities with 100 residents, this equates to a minimum...
Assisted living providers received a major regulatory blow from the Arizona Legislature this week after it passed an overhaul on best practices, training requirements and penalties for delinquent facilities. And hospitals net a win as a bill championed by the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association (AzHHA) moves out of the Senate...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released the proposed rule for 2025 hospice reimbursement including a 2.6% raise in per diems and two new quality measures.
The 2.6% net increase would amount to a $705 million increase from FY 2024, including a 3% market basket update and a 0.4% cut for productivity. According to the...Arizona News
Last week, legislators returned to the Capitol for the start of the 2024 Arizona Legislative Session and Governor Katie Hobbs gave her annual State of the State address.
Lawmakers have a significant challenge before them when it comes to balancing the budget this year, as the state is projected to end the fiscal year this summer in...
It looks like the Biden administration will fall short on its promise to institute federal staffing minimums for nursing homes after a new study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) commissioned to determine the appropriate level of staffing made no recommendations.
Instead, the study said, there were no staffing...
While America waits for the outcome of debt ceiling negotiations between the U.S. House of Representatives leadership and President Joe Biden, the rest of Congress is underway addressing some of the criticisms of nursing home care and pharmacy benefit managers.
The Senate Special Committee on Aging posted a new report demonstrating...
Today is the last day of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), and policies are rapidly shifting to accommodate the post-pandemic healthcare landscape in the U.S.
On Tuesday, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced that it would continue allowances for telehealth companies to prescribe controlled substances for six...
On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed the FY 2024 Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Payment Prospective Systems (PPS) rates. It includes an increase of 3.7%, or $1.2 billion in Medicare Part A payments to SNFs.
The rate increase reflects a 6.1% market basket update to the payment rates comprised of a...
Most committees didn't meet at the Arizona State Legislature last week, as the last day for bills to cross over to the opposite chamber took precedence for time. Neither Health and Human Services committee has met for the past two weeks.
On Arizona Statehood Day, legislators voted unanimously to advance SB1710, which would create an...
In response to The Biden Administration's minimum staffing requirement proposal for nursing homes, the American Health Care Association (AHCA) released an updated report from the accounting and consulting firm CliftonLarsonAllen LLP that estimates as many as 191,000 nurses and nurse’s aides are needed at an annual cost of up to $11.3...
The winter surge of COVID-19 has hit Arizona. Cases are on the rise with seniors hit especially hard. In Arizona, the influx of cases in tandem with the high volume of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases has some Arizona officials urging masking in public places and the resumption of mitigating practices.
There were 12,987 new...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have logged more than 3,000 comments regarding its proposal of mandatory staffing minimums for America's nursing homes. Nursing home operators also learned from AHCA and NCAL that if nursing homes continue to gain jobs at the current, modest pace, a potential recovery to pre-pandemic...
CMS estimates the impact of the proposed payment policies would be a loss of about $320 million in Medicare Part A payments to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in FY 2023 compared to FY 2022.
On July 5, letters signed by 22 U.S. senators led by Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), and another signed by 18 U.S. representatives led by...
As nursing homes across the country are grappling with staff shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration is considering a rule that nursing homes spend most of their Medicaid payments on direct care for residents rather than operations or capital improvements.
According to Modern Healthcare, the rule would...
Some good news for the industry with skilled nursing property occupancy reaching 76.7%, its highest level in February since April 2020 and Arizona reporting only a 3% rise in facilities reporting staffing shortages since 2020, but according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, the sector only added 900 jobs...
The BA.2 variant, also known as the "stealth Omicron," is now the dominant coronavirus version in the U.S. and more than 60 other countries. This week, Philadelphia became the first major city in the U.S. to announce that it would return to mandating masks in public spaces due to the spread of BA.2. Meanwhile, Arizona, the Centers for...
On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) filed the Fiscal Year 2023 Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Prospective Payment System (PPS) Proposed Rule. The reimbursements include a 3.9% increase to industry reimbursements, but in aggregate the impact of payment policies would result in a decrease of $320 million in...
