Moratorium in Nursing Home Fines by CMS Expires in May

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Jonathan Lips

In testimony to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said that the moratorium on monetary fines for care centers will expire in May and that providers will soon begin receiving civil monetary fines in eight additional categories.  

CMS instituted the 18-month moratorium of enforcement penalties under Phase 2 of the Final Rules of participation in late 2017 to give care centers more time to comply.

F-Tags included in the moratorium were: F655 – Baseline Care Plan, F740 – Behavioral Health Services, F741 – Sufficient/Competent Direct Care/Access Staff-Behavioral Health, F758 – Psychotropic Medications related to PRN Limitations, F838 – Facility Assessment, F881 – Antibiotic Stewardship Program, F865 – QAPI Program and Plan related to the development of the QAPI Plan, and F926 – Smoking Policies.

“The moratorium was around using some of our more severe enforcement penalties, like civil monetary penalties, for just those eight items for 18 months, and instead, the enforcement remedies we put in place were more educational in nature,” said CMS Chief Medical Officer Kate Goodrich, M.D. “Starting in May of this year, those eight items now will be subject to any of the penalties we have.”