Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a press release announcing new regulatory requirements that will require nursing homes to inform residents, their families and representatives of COVID-19 cases in their facilities. In addition, CMS will now require nursing homes to report cases of COVID-19 directly to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This information must be reported in accordance with existing privacy regulations and statute. This measure augments longstanding requirements for reporting infectious disease to State and local health departments. Finally, CMS will also require nursing homes to fully cooperate with CDC surveillance efforts around COVID-19 spread.
CDC will be providing a reporting tool to nursing homes that will support Federal efforts to collect nationwide data to assist in COVID-19 surveillance and response. This joint effort is a result of the CMS-CDC Work Group on Nursing Home Safety. CMS plans to make the data publicly available. This effort builds on recent recommendations from the American Health Care Association and Leading Age, two large nursing home industry associations, that nursing homes quickly report COVID-19 cases.
CDC continues to work closely with CMS, state and local health departments, and nursing homes to inform national infection prevention and control policies and strategies to further support nursing homes, residents and families of residents. CDC built a long-term care toolkit to be distributed to all 50 states to help increase infection prevention and control preparedness in nursing homes and provide remote tools to further assist these important healthcare providers.
The new CMS regulatory requirements for nursing homes is attached here –
April 20, 2020 Update – COVID-19 positive cases/deaths in New Jersey nursing homes and assisted living facilities now reported on state website
The NJ Department of Health website now lists all statistics on COVID-19 positive cases/deaths in New Jersey by counties – 425 communities on the list as of now: https://covid19.nj.gov/#live-updates
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