In honor of Rosh Hashana our digest went up today, but covers news and tidbits from the week of September 16^th – 23^rd.

WHITE HOUSE:

The White House focused this week on the Global Fund Replenishment (the Global Fund is an international effort to fight infectious deceases around the world), a state-by-state look at their student loan relief plan and follow up to the CHIPS+ Act that Congress passed a few weeks ago. 3 items of note for us:

• They announced the release of nearly $1.5 billion to fight opioid crisis. More specifics below in the HHS section.

• Domestic Policy Advisor Susan E. Rice posted an outline of the many different resources that federal agencies are making to promote voting access, including an effort by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs to partner with several states to help veterans register. While geared specifically to states, if you have a VA contract, this may be an opportunity to deepen your partnership with them.

• In a highly-publicized 60 minutes interview the President said “Covid is over”. For our purposes, this could be an indication that the White House is planning on making the expected PHE extension this October the last one. However, there was a lot of pushback from the scientific community on the statement (as well as from Speaker Pelosi).

CONGRESS:

With the government shutdown looming, Senator Schumer began the technical process needed to pass a Continuing Resolution (the CR is the tool the government will be using to keep operations funded through January). Given the enormity of the task, and the time crunch in terms of working days, a lot of other legislation is going to be pushed to the side. A few other notes from Congress this week:

• A House Subcommittee held a hearing this week on the Covid response in skilled nursing facilities. They also released a highly critical report of the for-profit industry in advance of the hearing. Each party traded political attacks (Republicans going after Governor Cuomo; Democrats going after the Trump Administration). The experts who testified, like Dr. David Grabowski and Dr. Alice Bonner, both testified that the problems the committee were attempting to address were not tied to for-profit ownership but were symptomatic of the nature of congregate care. You can access a copy (as prepared for testimony) of Dr. Grabowski’s testimony (PDF) and Dr. Bonner’s testimony (PDF).

• RollCall took a look at USCIS’ effort to speed up the green-card process and pointed out that without further Congressional action USCIS will be unable to maintain the pace. Taken together with last week’s Senate hearing on immigration in the healthcare workforce, the signs are encouraging that Congress is starting to realize immigration has to be a part of the solution to the workforce crisis.

• One other interesting immigration piece – the White House is quietly working on a new refugee policy, specifically with the private sector, for Afghan refugees.

• As we’ve discussed many times here, Minority Leader Congressman Kevin McCarthy is poised for the Speaker role if the GOP takes back the House. This week he released an agenda for when that happens.

• 538 had three insightful pieces on the polling situation as we get closer to the elections:
• Are the Democrats losing their recently gained momentum?
• Polls in Wisconsin have been highly inaccurate over the last few elections. What can we learn about the hotly contested Senate race there?
• Are the polls showing Senator Bennett of Colorado in the lead too optimistic? This is particularly important as the caliber of his opponent is much higher than in other states where candidate quality is hurting the GOP.

AGENCIES:

As mentioned above, HHS released details on a new funding appropriation of $1.5 billion aimed at helping ease the overdose epidemic that has been exacerbated by Covid. Most of the funding is aimed at state agencies (which may trickle down to opportunities for us). One item that may interest facilities in rural areas is HRSA’s Rural Communities Opioid Response Program (RCORP) which got $104 million for use in rural communities.

HHS also released, via the Administration for Community Living (ACL), the first ever national strategy roadmap to support family caregivers. You can access a copy here (PDF).

The OIG at HHS called out CMS this week, telling them that they have opportunities to strengthen oversight into the MCO industry. You can access copy here (PDF).

They also released a look specifically at the Life Care Centers of nursing homes and their compliance with infection control procedures during Covid. You can access the report in brief here (PDF) and complete report here (PDF).

Finally, they released an analysis of ESRD networks actions taken during Covid to help CMS with responding to Covid. No recommendations were made. It’s simply an analysis of what was done. You can access the report in brief here (PDF) and the complete report here (PDF).

CMS released three QSO’s of interest:

• QSO-20-38-NH (Revised) (PDF): New rules related to testing of asymptomatic staff.

• QSO-20-39-NH (Revised) (PDF): New rules related to masking during visitation.

• QSO-22-24-ESRD (PDF): Detailing new metrics related to analyzing dialysis facilities, specifically transport. This may be relevant to those of our readers involved with dialysis centers.

We mentioned a while back that CMS was making available pricing transparency data from insurers. Several large academic groups are pushing back on how CMS has made the information available, essentially charging CMS with allowing insurers to dump enormous datasets that are not readily usable. As these rules do impact self-insured employers, it’s something to monitor.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) published the first in a series of reports looking back at earmarks that Congress issued this year.

This may have been around for a while, but I only came across it this week. The Government created a Pandemic Oversight Committee office that tracks all the pandemic spending in one place. For the analytically inclined, there’s a lot of interesting data on government Covid spending there.

MISCELLANEOUS:

On the non-agency front:

• The Center for Caregiver Advancement, a California based advocacy group focused on caregiver training, received a $14 million grant for workforce development.

• JAMA posted an important look at healthcare workforce burnout during/post Covid-19.

• The Ohio Department of Medicaid called out Aetna for their unconscionable practices related to transporting seniors.

• Finally, an interesting tidbit from Canada: Ontario instituted new rules that allowed patient to be transferred much further distances as they struggle to open up hospital beds.

Questions? Email us at support@myzpax.com.

z-INTEL WhatsApp info:

· Group Invite Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/EoNiPi8ezrOBV6SW1Gf7nD

· Status Link: https://wa.me/message/WMSWZATTB5D6E1