CMS issued a Quality, Safety & Oversight Group (QSO) memo Friday September 17 on “Reinforcement of EMTALA Obligations specific to Patients who are Pregnant or are Experiencing Pregnancy Loss.” The memo, QSO-21-22-Hospitals, not only reminded hospitals to “ensure all staff who may come into contact with a patient seeking emergency care are aware of the hospital’s obligation under EMTALA,” but had an express message for clinicians.

Check your emergency rooms, outpatient clinics, wound care clinics, ambulatory care sites and anywhere else where pandemic-related equipment shortages have forced your facility to go outside normal supply lines for replacement medical devices.

You now have a chance to weigh in on proposed revisions to emergency management standards by The Joint Commission (TJC) as well as the long-delayed revisions to the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) chapters on <795> Pharmaceutical Compounding – Nonsterile Preparations and <797> Pharmaceutical Compounding – Sterile Preparations.

The second-largest accreditation organization (AO) in the country will continue to do triennial hospital surveys as required by CMS, but will now conduct NIAHO® annual surveys only remotely.

Among other things, the changes include requiring a hospital to have a stewardship program as an organizational priority, that it allocates staffing, financial and technology resources to support the program, and that quality data is reported to hospital leadership.

The rule is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register August 13, with most elements will be effective October 1. CMS also published a 14-page fact sheet summary. In a press release highlighting the rule’s efforts to improve health equity and hospital readiness related to COVID-19 and future emergencies, CMS says it is trying to reduce disparities in maternal morbidity.

Delaware joins 23 other states, the District of Columbia, and two U.S. territories in adopting full practice authority legislation, which streamlines healthcare delivery by granting patients full and direct access to the comprehensive services NPs are educated and clinically prepared to provide.

In a letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, AHA asked that flexibilities such as the use of telehealth, hospital-at-home programs, and the easing of certain licensure requirements for out-of-state providers and nurse practitioners be continued.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently investigated The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to check whether the agency, which oversees patient safety at hundreds of U.S. hospitals, considers national security as part of its enterprise risk management (ERM) process.

DNV Healthcare-accredited hospitals, critical access hospitals, and psychiatric hospitals should be aware that the accreditation organization is returning to unannounced, onsite surveys as of September 7.