HRSA continues to make COVID-19 claims reimbursement to health care entities for the testing and treatment of uninsured individuals. The program is also reimbursing providers for administering COVID-19 vaccines to uninsured individuals. Starting last week, HRSA began adding claims information related to COVID-19 vaccine administration. As of March 3, 2021, HRSA has reimbursed over $2 billion in testing claims, $2 billion in treatment claims and newly added is approximately $750 thousand in vaccine administration claims for the uninsured.

A listing of health care entities that have agreed to the program’s Terms and Conditions and received claims reimbursement is now available from CDC.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Department of Labor, and Treasury Department issued joint guidance clarifying that private group health insurance plans and issuers generally must cover COVID-19 diagnostic testing without cost sharing, prior authorization, or other medical management requirements. This guidance also includes information for providers on how to get reimbursed for COVID-19 diagnostic testing or for administering the COVID-19 vaccine to those who are uninsured. Read more here.

Telehealth.HHS.gov has added a new best practice guide to help mental health providers navigate changes to telehealth policy due to the COVID-19 public health emergency.  This official website from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services includes resources for getting started, developing a strategy, billing, preparing patients, and more.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held a three-day event to promote the most effective strategies for building confidence and increasing access to the vaccine nationwide.  Resources, including recordings of the forum’s sessions and a toolkit for community outreach, are now available.  Learn more about the role of the Health Resources and Services Administration in the effort, including distribution of vaccines to 250 health centers nationwide.

As COVID-19 vaccines continue rolling out across the country, CMS is taking action to protect the health and safety of our nation’s patients and providers and keeping you updated on the latest COVID-19 resources from HHS, CDC and CMS.

With information coming from many different sources, CMS has up-to-date resources and materials to help you share important and relevant information on the COVID- 19 vaccine with the people that you serve. You can find these and more resources on the COVID-19 Partner Resources Page and the HHS COVID Education Campaign page. We look forward to partnering with you to promote the safety of vaccines and encourage our beneficiaries to get vaccinated when they have the opportunity.

If you manage healthcare staff:

CDC and CMS have useful COVID-19 vaccine resources and ready-made materials you can use to inform your healthcare personnel.   Medical centers, pharmacies, and clinicians can use or adapt these ready-made materials to build confidence about COVID-19 vaccination among your healthcare teams and other staff.

The CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccination Communication Toolkit For Medical Centers, Pharmacies, and Clinicians is a resource that provides ready-made materials that can be used to educate healthcare teams and staff and to give them tool they can use to educate patients and answer their questions about the vaccines. The toolkit includes:

• How to Build Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccines: A Short Guide for Immunization Coordinators in Medical Centers and Clinics – This informational guide presents six strategies for immunization coordinators to build vaccine confidence within their health system or clinics. It includes tangible actions to promote confidence, communication, and uptake of COVID-19 vaccine, which can help support confidence among providers and patients.
• Communications and Confidence Readiness Checklist – Use this checklist to assess the readiness of your facility to promote COVID-19 vaccine to healthcare personnel, and eventually, to patients. Each activity in the checklist includes links to corresponding CDC resources that you can tailor to the needs of your facility and the populations you serve.
• The COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence Conversation Starter – This conversation starter is a prompt for engaging healthcare providers during an in-person or virtual meeting in order to identify tailored approaches to promote vaccine confidence within a facility.
• Vaccine with Confidence – Use CDC’s Vaccinate with Confidence strategy to reinforce confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.
• Answering Your Questions About the New COVID-19 Vaccines – This fact sheet for healthcare personnel addresses common questions about the safety and efficacy of the new vaccines.
• V-safe After Vaccination Health Checker – Healthcare personnel can use this tool to receive personalized health check-ins after they receive a COVID-19 vaccine, and should encourage all COVID-19 vaccine recipients to participate. V-safe also provides second vaccine dose reminders if needed, and telephone follow up to anyone who reports medically significant adverse events.
• Posters that you can download, print, and hang in health facility common areas and staff break rooms to foster conversation and make vaccination visible:
  • Healthcare Workers and Employees: Stopping the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Going to Take All of Our Tools
  • Healthcare Workers and Employees: Three Reasons Why You Were Given Top Priority To Be Vaccinated Against COVID‑19
  • Healthcare Workers and Employees: Why Get Vaccinated? To Protect Yourself, Your Coworkers, Your Patients, Your Family
  • Healthcare Workers and Employees: Get Vaccinated, Get Your Smartphone, Get Started With v-safe
• Printable stickers in ORANGE and WHITE for staff to wear once they’ve gotten their vaccine.
• Slide presentations and accompany scripts are available to help health systems, clinics, and pharmacies educate healthcare personnel, teams and immunization coordinators about COVID-19 vaccination and build vaccine confidence within their organization:
  • Building Vaccine Confidence in Health Systems and Clinics: Tips for Immunization/Vaccine Coordinators
  • COVID-19 Vaccine Basics: What Healthcare Personnel Need to Know
  • Building Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccines Among your Patients: Tips for the Healthcare Team
• How CDC is Making COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendations Video – COVID-19 vaccines will be an important tool to help stop this pandemic. CDC’s Dr. Cohn explains how the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an independent group of experts, develops recommendations and advises CDC on the use of vaccines in our country and the process for making recommendations on COVID-19 vaccines.

CMS maintains a COVID-19 Provider Toolkit to ensure health care providers have the necessary tools to respond to the COVID-19 public health emergency. CMS recently added up to date payment allowances for COVID-19 vaccine administration, including the new Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) vaccine.

The MLN Connects® Newsletter is also a great source of Medicare updates, including the latest information about vaccines as they become available.

Questions? Please e-mail us: Partnership@cms.hhs.gov

By Liz Carey

The American Hospital Association warns that without continued government support, many rural hospitals will be forced to shut their doors, leaving patients without care and local economies without their main employer and consumer.
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By Liz Carey

In two-thirds of the states where we can track vaccinations by county, rural areas are doing relatively well. One reason may be that a greater percentage of the rural population is eligible for the first rounds of vaccination.
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By Tim Murphy and Tim Marema

After dropping by an average of 20% each week for six straight weeks, the number of new Covid-19 cases fell by only 1% last week. It’s too soon to say if the change represents a pause or reversal in improvement, or simply an anomaly in data reporting caused by severe weather.
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The one-page summary and slides of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s (ACOG) position on COVID-19 vaccination and pregnancy presented during a recent National Adult and Influenza Immunization Summit’s (NAIIS) call are now available. ACOG recommends that COVID-19 vaccines not be withheld from pregnant individuals who meet criteria for vaccination, and these individuals should be free to make their own decision regarding vaccination. Pregnant individuals are encouraged to discuss this decision with their healthcare team, but documentation of this discussion is not required. They also recommend that COVID-19 vaccines be offered to lactating individuals based on their prioritization group. There is no need to avoid starting nor to discontinue breastfeeding in people who receive a COVID-19 vaccine. They also offer helpful resources on COVID-19 and pregnancy on their webpages. These are excerpted on a handy one-page document.