New rules for care facilities stir pushback

WASHINGTON — Threatening fines and funding cut-offs, the Trump administration on Tuesday issued new COVID-19 requirements for nursing homes and hospitals, prompting immediate pushback from beleaguered industries.

To check the spread of the coronavirus in nursing homes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it will require facilities to test staff regularly or face fines.

The move comes months after the White House first urged governors to test all nursing home residents and staff. With residents, nursing homes are being required to offer them coronavirus tests if there is an outbreak or if any show symptoms.

Officials also reinforced a reporting mandate for hospitals. It included a thinly veiled threat to cut off Medicare and Medicaid funds to facilities that fail to report certain COVID-19 data daily to the federal Health and Human Services department. Hospitals responded with a sharp rebuke, calling the move “heavy-handed” and raising the specter of loss of vital services for local communities in a pandemic, less than three months before Election Day.

Long-term care facilities represent less than 1% of the U.S. population, but they account for 42% of the COVID-19 deaths, with more than 70,000 fatalities reported by the COVID Tracking Project.

The plight of frail elders in nursing homes is politically sensitive for President Donald Trump, who is trying to maintain support from older voters amid disapproval of the government’s pandemic response. His administration is distributing fast-test machines to nursing homes, but there are continued reports that cases have been rising and facilities still face shortages of supplies like masks.