The following is the latest COVID-19 information from the federal government as of 12:15 p.m. on Friday, September 4.

Provider Relief Fund

  • Reminder: Applications are currently open for Phase 2 general distribution funding for Medicaid, Medicaid managed care, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), dental providers, certain Medicare providers, and assisted living facilities.  All groups have until September 13, 2020 to submit their tax identification number for validation and apply for funding from the phase 2 general distribution.  Go here for more information.
  • HHS announced that assisted living facilities may apply for funding under the Provider Relief Fund phase 2 general distribution allocation. Go here to see HHS’s announcement.
  • HHS has announced some of the details of an upcoming $2 billion Provider Relief Fund performance-based incentive payment distribution to nursing homes. HHS will measure nursing homes against a baseline level of infection in the community where individual facilities are located.  Learn more from HHS’s announcement of this distribution.
  • HHS has updated its Provider Relief Fund FAQ with new and modified questions.
    • Changes marked 9/1/2020 can be found on pages 22, 23, 29, and 32. The new information focuses largely on the newly announced distribution for assisted living facilities, criteria for eligibility, and applying to participate in the distribution.
    • One change, marked 9/2/2020 and on page 23, describes how HHS identified assisted living facilities that are eligible to receive distributions from the Provider Relief Fund.
    • Five changes, marked 9/3/2020 and found on pages 2, 9, and 17, address HHS requests for additional financial information, how to report Provider Relief Fund grants on Medicare cost reports, and the responsibility of parent organizations to send to their subsidiaries grants intended for those subsidiaries.

Find all of these changes in the Provider Relief Fund FAQ.

American Medical Association

The American Medical Association has updated codes and guidelines for office and other outpatient evaluation and management (E/M) services. Some of the changes were introduced earlier this year in response to the COVID-19 emergency.  The AMA has recommended to CMS that it implement these changes on January 1, 2021.  Learn more in this AMA news release.

 

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

  • CMS has updated the article “Quarterly Update for Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule and Laboratory Services Subject to Reasonable Charge Payment” in its online publication MLN Matters to reflect an update that includes additional COVID-19 codes. Some of those codes took effect on August 10 and others take effect on October 1.
  • CMS has updated the article “Update to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) Diagnosis Codes for Vaping Related Disorder and Diagnosis and Procedure Codes for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)” in its online publication MLN Matters to include new procedure codes.

 

Department of Health and Human Services

 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

 

Food and Drug Administration

The FDA has issued guidance to health care providers on the use of convalescent plasma for treating patients with COVID-19.