Coronavirus update for Wednesday, May 6 as of 3:00 p.m.

NASH Advocacy

• NASH wrote to HHS Secretary Alex Azar and CMS Administrator CMS Seema Verma to ask them to include in the next round of funding from the CARES Act provider relief fund grants to hospitals in places that have become COVID-19 hotspots since April 10 (the cut-off date for identifying recipient hospitals for the first round of hotspot funding); to target grant funds to private safety-net hospitals and others that serve especially high proportions of Medicaid and government-insured patients; and to establish a mechanism to enable hospitals that may have been overlooked in previous distribution methodologies to apply for additional grant money. See NASH’s letter here.

Department of Health and Human Services/Health Resources and Services Administration

• HHS’s Health Resources and Services Administration, which is administering the program through which providers can be reimbursed for COVID-19-related services they provide to uninsured patients, has posted information on how to batch enter patient roster information.
• HRSA has posted a list of billing vendors and clearinghouses that have committed to submitting claims as part of the program for providers to seek payment for care provided to uninsured COVID-19 patients.
• HRSA has posted information about timing expectations for COVID-19 claims processing.

Department of Health and Human Services/Office of Civil Rights

• HHS’s Office of Civil Rights has issued guidance to remind covered health care providers that HIPAA does not permit them to give media and film crews access to facilities where patients’ protected health information will be accessible without patients’ prior authorization.  The guidance clarifies that masking or obscuring patients’ faces or identifying information before broadcasting a recording of a patient is not sufficient to satisfy HIPAA requirements.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• The CDC has published a report, “Evidence Supporting Transmission of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 While Presymptomatic or Asymptomatic,” that supports the possibility of people who are presymptomatic or asymptomatic for COVID-19 transmitting the disease to others.
• The CDC has posted a guide on the differences between isolation and quarantine for COVID-19.

Food and Drug Administration

• The FDA has approved two generic drugs indicated to facilitate tracheal intubation and to provide skeletal muscle relaxation during surgery or mechanical ventilation.
• The FDA has issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a specific laboratory’s test for detecting COVID-19.
• The FDA has issued an EUA for a specific commercial product to be used in hospitals for remote monitoring and detection of changes in the QT interval of electrocardiograms in adult patients being treated for COVID-19.

Department of Labor

• The Labor Department has announced that Dislocated Worker Grant funding made available to states and territories to employ workers temporarily to respond to the COVID-19 emergency can be used for contact tracing.  States must apply for these grants.
• The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has released a new video and poster for employees and workers on how to properly wear and remove a respirator.

Federal Funding Opportunities for Hospitals

• NASH has prepared a document that collects and presents in one place the various new federal funding opportunities for hospitals resulting from legislation addressing the COVID-19 public health emergency.  Find that document here.

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