​CMS Announces Comprehensive Strategy to Enhance Hospital Capacity Amid COVID-19 Surge

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has outlined comprehensive steps to provide care to patients outside a traditional hospital setting amid COVID-19 hospitalizations across the country. These flexibilities include allowances for safe hospital care for eligible patients in their homes and updated staffing flexibility designed to allow ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) to provide greater inpatient care when needed. Building on CMS’s previous actions to expand the availability of telehealth across the nation, these actions are aimed at allowing health care services to be provided outside a hospital setting while maintaining capacity to continue critical non-COVID-19 care.

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“We are pleased to hear that CMS is recognizing the home as a viable option for healthcare delivery, which our home care agencies know well,” said HCAOA Executive Director Vicki Hoak. “We support these efforts to provide the appropriate care in the appropriate setting, and we will continue conversations at the state and federal levels to educate leaders about home care and the important role we can and should play in the healthcare continuum.”