After families of patients in skilled nursing homes have struggled for weeks to access information in the closed-to-visitors facilities, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have issued new requirements for nursing homes to inform residents and families about COVID-19 cases in their facilities.
CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced the new order Sunday, noting also that her agency will now require nursing homes to report cases of COVID-19 directly to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Nursing homes have been ground zero for COVID-19. Today’s action supports CMS’ longstanding commitment to providing transparent and timely information to residents and their families,” Verma said in a written statement. “Nursing home reporting to the CDC is a critical component of the go-forward national COVID-19 surveillance system and to efforts to reopen America.”
The two federal agencies will give nursing homes specific direction on how to report the information through the National Health Safety Network. So far, it has been option for nursing homes to provide information about their cases. But now it will be mandatory and used “to support surveillance of COVID-19 locally and nationally, monitor trends in infection rates, and inform public health policies and actions,” the order states.
Verma said also that the information will be made public.
The nursing homes must inform residents and their representatives — such as family members — within 12 hours of confirming a case of COVID-19, or if there are three or more residents or staff that have new respiratory systems occurring within 72 hours. The facilities much update residents and their families at least weekly and include information about how they are mitigating the risk of infection, the order says.
The news comes after families have struggled since the start of the pandemic’s spread to obtain information about the outbreak in nursing homes in the Bay Area and beyond. Many have told this news organization they didn’t know about cases until they showed up in media reports.
On Friday night, the California Department of Public Health revealed a list of nursing homes in the state with positive cases among staff or patients, but the list is only a partial “snapshot” in time of facilities that have offered that information to the state — not a comprehensive list of all the facilities with cases up to this point. It also does not include assisted living facilities, which are not regulated by the health department.
“We are working with (skilled nursing facilities) on a reporting system that will ensure we can publicly report 100 percent of the facilities in the coming days,” state health officials wrote in an email to this news organization.
