Last week, CMS issued an
interim final rule that requires nursing homes to routinely test staff for COVID-19 effective September 2, 2020. CMS issued
QSO memo 20-38 describing how to comply with the new regulation and that routine staff testing is based on the county COVID-19 test positivity rate.
CMS posted today a
new excel file dated 9-2-20 that flags each county as green, yellow and red that should be used to dictate your routine testing frequency of staff that is based on data from August 20-August 26. Rates of county positivity are posted
here. You need to use this new file in place of the prior file in setting your routine testing frequency.
If your county is:
✅ green counties must test staff 1 x per month
📒 yellow counties must test 1 x per week
🚩red counties must test 2 x per week
CMS has indicated they will post an updated file on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of each month.
Members should refer to the following resources for more information: