Updates to long-term care facilities’ minimum health and safety standards, issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on June 29, go into effect Oct. 24. These updates, part of a Biden-Harris Administration initiative to advance the quality of nursing home care and the safety in such facilities, also included new guidance in the State Operations Manual (SOM).
In announcing the new measures in June, CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said:
“As the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted, we have a pressing moral responsibility to ensure that residents of long-term care facilities are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. CMS is proud to be leading President Biden’s initiative to improve the safety and quality of care in the nation’s nursing homes, and this set of improvements is our next step toward that goal.”
Compliance with these updates, first outlined in a fact sheet released before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address in March 2022, will be monitored by surveyors as they respond to routine and complaint-based inspections of nursing homes.
Here are the other key issues addressed in this new guidance:
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