WASHINGTON — The Trump administration threatened hospitals on Tuesday with revoking their Medicare and Medicaid funding if they did not report coronavirus patient data and test results to the Department of Health and Human Services. The threat was included in new emergency rules, announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, that make mandatory what has until now been a voluntary reporting program. Seema Verma, the centers’ administrator, said the changes “represent a dramatic acceleration of our efforts to track and control the spread of Covid-19.”The new rules generated an immediate backlash from the American Hospital Association, which said the penalties, if enforced, would put hospitals out of business by effectively expelling them from the Medicare and Medicaid programs. “It’s beyond perplexing why C.M.S. would use a regulatory sledgehammer — threatening Medicare participation — to the very organizations that are on the front lines in the fight against Covid-19,” Richard J. Pollack, the association’s president, said in a statement, adding that the rules were issued without any opportunity for feedback and should be “reversed immediately.”

Source: New York Times August 26, 2020 00:11 UTC