Health Secretary Discusses Status of COVID-19 in PA
Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine, M.D., held a news conference on Monday to discuss the status of the COVID-19 public health emergency in the state and answer questions from reporters.
During the news conference, Secretary Levine discussed the recent increase in the number of new COVID-19 cases in the state, the age groups that are seeing increases, the status of COVID-19 in schools, the state’s prospects for containing the virus’s spread, the changing nature of the virus’s impact on those who contract it, the upcoming holiday season, and more. Read about what Secretary Levine had to say in this Pennsylvania Capital-Star article and another account of her news conference in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The Department of Health has published an
Applications for the Provider Relief Fund Phase 3 general distribution are now being accepted by HHS. HHS will hold a webcast on Monday, November 2 at 3:00 p.m. (eastern) for interested parties. Go
Four weeks after HHS announced that it would distribute 150 million state-of-the-art Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 tests nationally to assist with states’ reopening efforts, states have begun to report back to HHS about how they are choosing to distribute the rapid, point-of-care tests. Of the states that have provided preliminary reports, the BinaxNOW allocations are largely being sent to local health departments, K-12 schools and institutes of higher education, nursing homes, hospitals, and correctional facilities. Learn more from
The CDC has updated its
Created in July to help long-term-care facilities address their struggles responding to the COVID-19 emergency, the state has six RRHCs led by 11 Pennsylvania health systems. The RRHCs were created to provide clinical, operational, technical, and educational support to long-term-care facilities at a time when COVID-19-related deaths in such facilities accounted for more than 60 percent of all COVID-19 deaths state-wide. With financial backing from the federal CARES Act, the RRHCs support nearly 2000 long-term-care facilities of different types at which more than 127,000 Pennsylvanians currently reside.
DHS’s Office of Developmental Programs
CMS announced that
CMS has expanded the list of telehealth services that Medicare fee-for-service will pay for during the COVID-19 public health emergency, adding 11 new services to the Medicare telehealth services list. Medicare will begin paying for these services immediately and for the duration of the COVID-19 emergency. These new telehealth services include certain neurostimulator analysis and programming services and cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation services. Go
That’s according to a new study from the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.
The letter refers to changes in how the federal Department of Health and Human Services wants hospitals to calculate the revenue they lost as a result of COVID-19 – the justification in part for the Provider Relief Fund payments hospitals have received through the CARES Act. In June, HHS told hospitals how to make that calculation but late last month it changed those directions in ways that could force many Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals to return some or even much of the federal aid they received.
Provider Relief Fund
Food and Drug Administration