Aging & Disability

In April 2024, CMS issued the Minimum Staffing Standards for Long-Term Care Facilities and Medicaid Institutional Payment Transparency Reporting final rule which established new minimum nurse staffing requirements for nursing homes by nurse type.

States may use Appendix K to modify their existing Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS) 1915(c) waiver programs during emergency situations. During the COVID-19 public health emergency, states used Appendix K to make temporary changes to access and eligibility, payment, services, and other aspects of their waiver programs.

Stakeholders, researchers, and policymakers have identified varying nursing home ownership structures and ownership transactions as potentially influencing the quality of care delivered to vulnerable residents.

Prior research from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) show older adults receiving federal housing assistance face disproportionately high rates of chronic conditions and health care utilization.

This Issue Brief explores telehealth use for people and Medicare beneficiaries with disabilities and examines questions on the use of audio-only telehealth during the second and third years of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

On April 25, 2024, HHS and DoL released recommendations, in the form of an Issue Brief, to improve data infrastructure on the workforce delivering home and community-based services (HCBS) in response to President Biden’s

Introduction

ASPE serves as a facilitator for HHS to advance equity in several ways.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) expanded financial assistance in Medicare’s Low-Income Subsidy (LIS) Program would have benefited nearly 461,000 Partial LIS enrollees had the provision been in effect in 2020. An additional 2.9 million Part D enrollees who were eligible but not enrolled in LIS would also have benefited from the program.

This paper provides an overview of Health Information Technology (HIT) adoption and utilization in long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) settings. This study found that LTPAC have adopted electronic health records (EHRs) to support clinical and business needs. Interoperable exchange of health information however is not routine or widely used.