RICHMOND, Va. (WDBJ) - Governor Ralph Northam has announced new guidelines and testing requirements for reopening long-term care facilities. He also outlined how the commonwealth will direct $246 million, primarily from federal CARES Act funding, to support long-term care facilities in their dealings with COVID-19. The governor is directing the Virginia Department of Health to make public facility-specific data regarding COVID-19 cases and deaths associated with long-term care facilities.
Click here for the data.
“The lockdowns of long-term care facilities to protect residents and staff from the spread of COVID-19 have been hard on residents and their families,” said Governor Northam. “These actions will help support long-term care facilities as they ease those restrictions, while keeping their residents safe and ensuring that the public gets accurate information on the spread of this virus in these facilities.”
In May, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) outlined reopening criteria for nursing facilities. These criteria include a recommendation that all facilities conduct a baseline testing survey, and that facilities with outbreaks test residents and staff weekly. VDH’s state-specific guidelines for nursing home reopening require licensed nursing homes, certified skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), and certified nursing facilities (NFs) to conduct baseline and ongoing testing of all facility staff and residents while those facilities are in the first phase of the reopening process. Testing recommendations for latter phases of the reopening process are under development and will be informed by what is learned in the initial part of reopening.
According to the state, Virginia will spend an additional $246 million in funding to support nursing homes and assisted living facilities in addressing staffing shortages, increasing infection control measures, and purchasing personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as complying with the new testing requirements. The majority of funding will go to nursing facilities that receive Medicaid payments. More than $56 million is provided for periodic testing of nursing home residents and staff. During the reconvened session in April, Governor Northam and the General Assembly agreed to increase Medicaid reimbursement to nursing homes by $20 per resident per day, to help support facilities.
Because a majority of outbreaks in the commonwealth have occurred in long-term care facilities, VDH, in partnership with the Virginia National Guard, has supported long-term care facilities in conducting “baseline” or point prevalence surveys (testing all residents and staff in the same time period). VDH has a goal to complete these baseline surveys of all Virginia nursing homes by July 15, 2020.
Governor Northam also announced that, given the changing nature of the pandemic in Virginia, he is directing VDH to release the names of individual long-term care facilities (nursing facilities and assisted living facilities) that have experienced COVID-19 outbreaks.
VDH had released aggregate data about outbreaks in long-term care facilities, given what Northam said was “their responsibility to protect patient and facility anonymity under the Code of Virginia.” But due to the widespread nature of the pandemic, he said it is now unlikely that releasing facility information would compromise anonymity or discourage facilities from participating in public health investigations.
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$246M announced to support response to coronavirus in long-term care facilities in VA - WDBJ7
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