The Health Policy War Room

On May 13th, CMS released the latest in a series of rules intended to support the control of the spread of COVID-19 infections in long-term care (LTC) facilities and intermediate care facilities for individuals with intellectual disabilities (ICF-IID). The interim final rule with comment (IFC) went into effect on May 21st; however, CMS is accepting comments from interested stakeholders until July 12, 2021. With the implementation of these new rules, CMS is requiring LTC facilities and ICF-IID to develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure that they offer residents and staff vaccination against COVID–19 when vaccine supplies are available. CMS is defining “staff” as those individuals working in the facility in a full-time capacity as well as those individuals who provide weekly services on-site. CMS chose not to extend this requirement to individuals who infrequently enter facilities -- such as service technicians, plumbers and others who may enter the facility only a few ti...

Earlier this week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its latest bimonthly report to Congress on the status of the Federal Response to the COVID-19 pandemic . The GAO reviewed data from multiple sources including USAspending.gov, data obtained directly from agencies, Bloomberg, and other economic research groups. The GAO also developed health indicators that may be useful in continued measurement of response to this and future pandemics. The GAO found that over $2.2 trillion has been allocated for pandemic relief, of which agencies had obligated $1.5 trillion and recorded spending $1.3 trillion. Additionally, GAO found that more can be done to monitor the health care system's response to the pandemic, and they recommended four healthcare metrics that could be used to measure the system's ability to handle and react to emergencies. Finally, the GAO found that the economy is still weak, but appears to be improving with the help of the Federal Pandemic Response. T...