CRF Update from Director Corcoran. Responding to numerous questions about when providers would begin to receive payments from the Office of Budget and Management's (OBM's) Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) portal, Medicaid Director Maureen Corcoran made a public announcement that mirrored what we heard privately from other DeWine Administration sources late last week. Director Corcoran wrote:

Just a quick update from OBM—as of end of day Friday

• $132 million was being processed for 845 providers.
• If the provider has EFT set up, they should see the deposit to their bank account on Tuesday; give or take a day, depending on how their bank processes these transactions.
• Those without EFT will receive paper checks. These are being mailed early this week.
• Approx. 1100 providers did not fully match the validation file, so the department teams will be working together to followup. This may require individual contact with providers.

Thanks for your patience. This will get smoother and improve as we go along.

Providers will receive one payment that encompasses the amounts approved in two different Controlling Board meetings last month.

Director Corcoran's message appears to account for approximately 1,945 providers out of a total of 10,619 individual listings on the state's latest list. Some providers appear multiple times for different programs, and 845 providers receiving payments could represent a larger number of lines on the list. Presumably the other possibly 8,600+ providers have not yet applied for this funding, which is concerning. On the other hand, the $132 million being distributed this week makes up more than a third of the total, so the providers who have been approved for funding must be the larger organizations.

Also, a number of members informed OHCA about missing providers and other discrepancies with the state's list. We heard today from Patrick Beatty of the Department of Medicaid, "[t]here appear to be a few with the right information NPI provider ID etc. but wrong name. We have identified those and are working with OBM to update the names."

CMS Reinstates Surveys of All Providers. Today the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that they released Quality, Safety, and Oversight (QSO) letter 20-35-All, which largely reinstates normal CMS-mandated surveys of all provider and supplier types. CMS specified that in addition to the limited surveys that were being done under previous QSOs, "States should resume performing the following surveys as soon as they have the resources (e.g., staff and/or Personal Protective Equipment) to do so ...." The surveys to be reinstated include on-site revisits for surveys with end dates after June 1, 2020, complaint surveys when the complaint is categorized as non-immediate jeopardy-medium (commonly referred to as 10-day complaints), and annual recertification surveys. The bulk of QSO 20-35 lays out rather confusing details on how enforcement actions that were stopped under the previous QSOs will be handled, including allowing desk reviews of all deficiencies from pre-June 1 surveys except certain immediate jeopardy cites. As the new QSO only came out this afternoon, we will discuss with the Health Department their plans and timetable for implementation tomorrow.

FDA Authorizes New COVID-19 Saliva Test. Over the weekend, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it gave Emergency Use Authorization to a new saliva test for COVID-19 developed by Yale University. According to the announcement and supporting documentation, this test, which is a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) laboratory test, is unique in two ways. First, it does not require a swab - saliva can be collected in any sterile container. Second, the laboratory analysis is simpler and requires less reagent than nasal swabs and, as a result, should be less expensive. Many questions remain, such as how soon laboratories offering the new test will be available to test Ohioans, the turn-around time, whether the test can work with the point-of-care testing devices the Department of Health and Human Services is distributing to SNFs, and others, but we hope this new test will offer another solid option for testing staff and recipients of services.