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Clinicians participating in the Quality Payment Program Merit-based Incentive Payment System in 2020 whose practice was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 public health emergency may apply for an exception to reweight the MIPS performance categories, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently confirmed that Medicare contractors will not calculate an average length of stay for long-term care hospitals for cost reporting periods that include the COVID-19 public health emergency, which took effect March 1.

Nearly 20 health care provider organizations, including the AHA, urged Congress to enact legislation to clarify that relief funds provided through the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund and other programs as part of the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic are exempt from taxation, and that entities receiving them maintain the tax deductions attributable to these funds.

The Department of Health and Human Services invites stakeholder teams, including health care providers, to submit innovative proposals through Sept. 8 for an online platform to connect older adults, veterans, disabled people and other vulnerable populations to technologies and social engagement programs that can address loneliness and social isolation.

The Behavioral Health Digital Pulse — free to AHA members through a collaboration between the AHA and digital health consultancy AVIA — allows hospitals and health systems to assess and advance their digital strategies to integrate physical and behavioral health.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has created an Office of Burden Reduction and Health Informatics to build on its Patients over Paperwork initiative across Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Health Insurance Marketplace and use health data to foster innovation and better care.

A National Quality Forum task force released a report identifying opportunities to advance safe, appropriate, person-centered care over the next decade.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response June 26 at 1 p.m. ET will host the next webinar in its series ”Securing the Health Sector,” which will focus on “COVID-19 and the Use of Thermal Detection Cameras in the Healthcare Environment.”

The Food and Drug Administration has partnered with the Critical Path Institute and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences to launch the CURE Drug Repurposing Collaboratory, a forum for exchanging clinical practice data to inform potential new uses for existing drugs to treat unmet medical needs, beginning with COVID-19.

The AHA urged Congress to revise the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 in the next COVID-19 relief package to reflect new insights from the COVID-19 pandemic and the effect of recent post-acute care payment system reforms.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed the AHA’s legal challenge to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ final rule mandating that hospitals disclose their privately negotiated charges with commercial health insurers. AHA plans to appeal on an expedited basis.

The Department of Health and Human Services said its Office of Minority Health will partner with the Morehouse School of Medicine to deliver education and resources on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on racial- and ethnic-minority, rural and socially vulnerable communities.

Hospitalization rates for COVID-19 were nearly four times higher for black, and two times higher for Hispanic, Medicare beneficiaries than for white Medicare beneficiaries, according to data on COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which featured officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Food and Drug Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Students, employers and the general public can compare and evaluate graduate health care management programs with the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education’s new online search tool.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released the first annual report evaluating the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced Model.

Beginning July 6, both traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans will cover diagnostic COVID-19

Clinical laboratories and health care providers should stop using any antibody tests on the Food and Drug Administration’s “removed” test list, evaluate prior results from the test and whether to retest the patient using an FDA-authorized test, the agency said.

A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows emergency department visits dropped by 23% for heart attacks, 20% for strokes and 10% for hyperglycemic crises in first 10 weeks after the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration. 

A study of the first 20,000 adults hospitalized with severe or life-threatening COVID-19 to receive convalescent plasma found the investigational therapy safe in this diverse group of patients, according to findings from the Food and Drug Administration’s Expanded Access Program for COVID-19 reported in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.