Continued telehealth expansion under Medicare will be good for residents’ well-being, and may help administrators keep pace with other healthcare sectors, according to the Columbia University School of Nursing.
If the goal is to identify all asymptomatic nursing home staff, comprehensive repeat testing may be needed regardless of COVID positivity rates in the community, investigators told McKnight’s.
Long-term care facilities nationwide can voluntarily opt in to a free pharmacy partnership program that will provide and administer future COVID-19 vaccines on site, federal officials announced Friday.
Some nursing homes have been required to conduct staff testing at a higher frequency than necessary, the agency said in explaining recent changes to its testing methodology.
Routine testing of staff now will be based on the level of COVID-19 activity in the community. That’s according to official new guidance released Wednesday in response to federal regulatory changes disclosed Tuesday.
The new devices are intended for testing symptomatic patients within five days of symptom onset. How this scenario will fit into CMS’s new regulations for testing staff and residents remains to be seen.
Nursing homes could soon be subject to more coronavirus testing and reporting regulations.
CMS’s Fundamentals of COVID-19 Prevention webinars begin Thursday … FDA alert: Inaccurate results with Thermo Fisher Scientific TaqPath COVID-19 Combo Kit … Patchwork COVID-19 testing system complicates senior living community reopenings … Statins continued in most Medicare beneficiaries after nursing home admission
To qualify for CARES Act funds, eldercare facilities must take part in CMS’s online COVID-19 training program. The agency also expects to require weekly staff testing in certain cases.
No approval is needed for transferring or discharging residents between facilities for certain cohorting purposes, the agency says.
