After more than three years in effect, the federal COVID-19 public health emergency ended on May 11. That seems like a moment worth celebrating, after the upheaval the country has experienced since the beginning of the pandemic. The vast majority of Americans wouldn’t have noticed the switch, since life has been pretty much back to normal for over a year now. But health care facilities will feel the change.
Although states and localities may have different rules, staff vaccine mandates that caused a lot of consternation and even reached the Supreme Court will end at nursing homes, thereby hopefully relieving some of the staffing stresses on facilities. Continuous enrollment policies that prohibited states from disenrolling anyone from Medicaid using income-based eligibility requirements will end, so millions of people could lose Medicaid coverage. A number of regulatory waivers have already and will come to an end. One popular waiver, the requirement of a 3-day inpatient hospital stay to qualify for Medicare Part A coverage of in-facility skilled nursing services, was terminated, even though there are ways around it within certain value-based payment models.
We know there were months and years to prepare for an end to the public health emergency, and the removal of it will create pros and cons, but we won’t be surprised if we hear some mentions of it as an excuse for operational difficulties down the line. We’ll see if investor interest in the SNF space moderates at all, too.
