Preparing the Health Care System for Operation After the Public Health Emergency
At the beginning of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) used emergency waiver authorities and various regulatory authorities to enable flexibilities so providers could rapidly respond to people impacted by COVID-19.
CMS has developed a cross-cutting initiative to use a comprehensive, streamlined approach to reestablish certain health and safety standards and other financial and program requirements at the eventual end of the COVID-19 PHE. Most waivers and flexibilities will terminate at the conclusion of the PHE – and several have already been terminated. CMS encourages health care providers to prepare for the eventual end of these flexibilities as soon as possible and to begin moving forward to reestablishing previous health and safety standards for and billing practices.
Similar to the guidance CMS has made available to states, CMS is releasing fact sheets that will help the health care sector transition to operations once the PHE ends, whenever that may occur. The fact sheets we are releasing today summarize the current status of Medicare blanket waivers and flexibilities by provider type as well as flexibilities applicable to the Medicaid community:
- A Health Care System Resiliency fact sheet is available here.
- Read the Creating a Roadmap for the End of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency blog.
- The provider fact sheets are available here.
If you have any questions, please contact the CMS Office of Legislation.
