Pharmacy Partnership for Long Term Care Program - COVID Vaccine Registration Beginning yesterday, October 19, long term care facilities (nursing homes, assisted living communities, ICF/IIDs and other congregate settings for older adults) will have two weeks to register with the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) on how they want to receive and administer the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available.
To share information and guidance, CDC has released an Overview of the Pharmacy Partnership Program along with an FAQ document. AHCA/NCAL has also released a summary Overview and FAQs document that members may find useful, as well as scheduled webinars to share information and answer questions.
Skilled nursing facilities may register for COVID vaccine distribution via NHSN HERE.
Assisted living and other congregate care settings may register for COVID vaccine distribution via RedCap HERE.
MDHHS Releases Guidance on LOCD Door 0 Today, the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services (MDHHS) issued L 20-59 - Long Term Supports and Services (LTSS) COVID-19 Response for Skilled Nursing Providers: Level of Care Determination (LOCD) Door 0.
Earlier this year, MDHHS issued guidance that providers should not create Door 0 LOCDs in the Community Health Automated Medicaid Processing System (CHAMPS) during the public health emergency if there is was an existing eligible LOCD in CHAMPS for the beneficiary. Additionally, sharing that at the conclusion of the public health emergency, providers must ensure the beneficiary continues to meet eligibility requirements on an ongoing basis. The provider will be responsible for conducting a new LOCD if there has been a significant change in the beneficiary's condition.
In today's guidance, MDHHS clarifies if a beneficiary was determined functionally eligible under the LOCD tool upon admission to a Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF), and a subsequent LOCD conducted between December 3, 2019 and February 29, 2020 determined they are no longer functionally eligible (Door 0), then providers should continue to bill claims and send the payment requests to Provider Support (Providersupport@Michigan.gov).
To request payment, the skilled nursing facility provider must e-mail Provider Support with the following information: Beneficiary Name and Medicaid ID number, Billing Provider NPI, Door 0 Conducted Date, and the TCNs the provider is requesting payment on. Once the information is reviewed by MDHHS, the original rejected TCNs will be resurrected for payment.
MDHHS is allowing more days of LOCD Door 0 payment than were established prior to the public health emergency. Providers are eligible to receive payment for all days in which nursing facility services were rendered, including the days within the timeframe of the public health emergency (Executive Order 2020-169). Once the request has been submitted to Provider Support, MDHHS will monitor all incoming Nursing Facility claims for the affected beneficiaries and will process for payment. If payment is not received within 60 days of claim submission, please contact Provider Support for assistance.
MDHHS is actively working on inactivating any Door 0 LOCDs conducted after March 1, 2020 that were entered in CHAMPS which cut off existing LOCD eligibility, and is extending the previous eligible LOCD by 120 or 180 days per letters L 20-19 and L 20-43.
ECHO Nursing Home COVID-19 Action Network Pre-Launch Webinars As training centers and nursing homes around the country continue to join the Network and prepare to embark on their respective cohorts, there is a series of pre-launch webinars to explore some of the key themes that will later be featured more deeply over the 16-week sessions. To register for the two upcoming webinars click HERE.
Additional information and sign-up links are available HERE.
CMS Region V Shares Reporting Citations On The Rise Gregg Brandush, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Region V Division Director, Survey and Operations Group, shared with HCAM their office is seeing an increase in recent weeks in the number of providers throughout Region V failing to report required COVID-19 data into NHSN. Mr. Brandush shared, "we are seeing an increase in the numbers of providers that are not reporting their COVID testing data to the CDC as required. We were down as low as 0.8% of providers not reporting a couple of weeks ago, but last week we were up to over 4% of providers not reporting."
Providers should be checking their National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) data submissions periodically to ensure accurate reporting. In addition, or if a problem is identified, check Quality Improvement and Evaluation System (QIES) Inbox folders to check for letters from CMS in regards to reporting non-compliance. Citations related to failure to report required COVID-19 data are automatically system generated and sent to the providers QIES inbox.
If you receive an erroneous citation for failing to report COVID-19 data through NHSN, you will need to submit an IIDR to correct the citation.
NHSN POC Antigen Testing Reporting Module Now Available The Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) has added a Point of Care (POC) Laboratory Reporting Pathway within the NHSN Long-Term Care COVID-19 Module. This added capability enables CMS-certified long-term care facilities to meet the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) requirement to report SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care antigen test data, and other on-site COVID-19 laboratory testing data.
The new NHSN pathway creates a single, standardized reporting system that all nationwide nursing homes are already using for other mandatory COVID-19 reporting; and has the ability to share data with HHS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
In order to utilize the new pathway to fulfill reporting requirements, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities that are NHSN users will need to upgrade their NHSN Secure Access Management Service (SAMS) from Level 1 to Level 3. CDC is working closely with facilities to assist them in this process. An email invitation from CDC to perform this upgrade will be sent to users. Alternatively, facilities can email nhsn@cdc.gov with the subject line "Enhancing Data Security" to begin upgrading their SAMS access to use this Pathway.
Resident Voting FAQs The Michigan Long Term Care Ombudsman Program (MLTCOP) has been in discussion with the Michigan Department of State (DOS) to discuss questions received about staff and ombudsmen supporting residents with voting. As a result of these discussions, the DOS has released an FAQ document that may be helpful in guiding your efforts to assist residents to vote. 
New HCAM and MCAL Websites Launched Completely redesigned websites for both HCAM and MCAL are now live. Go to www.hcam.org and www.mcal.org to see the new websites. |