Nursing Communities Must Expect 3-Day Rule, Other CMS Requirements Will Return

Skilled nursing communities should expect certain U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) policy changes to be canceled once the pandemic ends, reports Skilled Nursing News . Harvard Medical School Professor David Grabowski expects a reversion to pre-pandemic rules, including the rescission of waivers designed to allow greater discharge of Medicare patients from hospitals to post-acute care settings. Some waived regulations include the three-day stay rule, which mandates that a patient must have a three-day inpatient hospital stay for Medicare to pay for the subsequent stay in a skilled nursing community. Avalere Managing Director Fred Bentley expects that requirement to be reinstated, as the waiver saw prominent use in markets that were most severely hit by COVID-19. He said the original rules were imposed as a guard against overuse and "wasteful care," and ensuring the appropriateness of patients coming from the hospital to different post-acute care settings. Although Grabowski believes these rules will return after the pandemic, he also suspects improvements made to telehealth may become permanent.