In an announcement scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on May 2, CMS said that TJC made all the changes required of the agency but that “due to travel restrictions and the reprioritization of survey activities brought on by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Public Health Emergency (PHE), CMS was unable to observe a hospital survey completed by TJC surveyors as part of the application review process, which is one component of the comparability evaluation. Therefore, we are providing TJC with a shorter period of approval.”

In an effort to “ensure a nimble and informed response to the next potential pandemic or epidemic, so that we are able to immediately respond to the situation at hand,” CMS is proposing revising hospital Conditions of Participation on infection prevention and control “to extend the current COVID-19 reporting requirements and to establish new reporting requirements for any future PHEs related to a specific infectious disease or pathogen.”

OSHA is moving forward with several rulemakings, three of which are healthcare-specific, that could affect many employers. If you’re in the healthcare field, you could be facing a permanent COVID-19 standard based on the agency’s 2021 emergency temporary standard (ETS) and infectious disease and workplace violence standards.

Noting that the AO said in January that it was likely to continue the remote annual surveys through at least April, DNV announced through an advisory March 23 that “COVID-19 positivity rates, hospitalizations, and community transmission have dropped significantly, making it much safer to return to onsite survey activities.”

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has announced an enforcement memorandum for a short-term increase in highly focused inspections directed at hospitals and skilled nursing care facilities that treat or handle COVID-19 patients.

Surveyors with TJC are looking at vaccination rates and will score a hospital if it is not 100% compliant in the states where the newest Conditions of Participation (CoPs) outlining vaccination expectations are already effective.

CMS published a warning to states that if they are contracted with the federal agency to carry out health and safety surveys that failure to carry out their responsibilities, including enforcing the new vaccine requirement, will result in a reduction of federal funds to the state’s survey offices.

The new advisory provides Joint Commission requirements and national recommendations to identify and help patients who have experienced intimate partner violence, which is “behavior by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual, or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse, and controlling behaviors,” according to the World Health Organization.

Surveyors will not implement or enforce the vaccination requirements issued under an interim final rule November 5 in the 25 states that have won an injunction to stop the mandate while the Biden-Harris administration rule winds its way through the courts.

In a report to Congress released late Wednesday, CMS said it will continue putting pressure on AOs to do a better job of enforcing Medicare’s Conditions of Participation but is also fine-tuning the process of how it validates their performance. Concerns remained concentrated on AOs failures to find problems within the physical environment that were spotted by CMS’s state survey agencies during surveys to validate the AOs findings. Validation surveys are supposed to be conducted within 60 days of an AO’s triennial visit.