It’s not exactly a do-over, but the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently made more than a few tweaks to a 2017 final rule for long-term care (LTC) facilities—including changes that move compliance deadlines and reinstate unintentionally omitted requirements.
In addition to correcting typos, the document issued by CMS also targets what it calls “technical” errors in the final rule that defines the requirements LTC facilities must meet in 2017 to participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. That rule, issued in October of 2016, was characterized as a sweeping change that touched on staffing, the physical plant, patient nutrition, self-assessments, and more.
The changes include corrections to a deadline for when LTC facilities were to have compliance and ethics programs in place. The rule as originally published stated that the new programs needed to be rolled out by November 28, 2017; according to CMS, that was wrong, and the actual date for startup of the programs is 2 years later, in November of 2019. According to CMS, this change and all others “are consistent with the discussion of the policy in the October 2016 final rule and do not make substantive changes to this policy.”
A summary of the corrections is available on the Federal Register.