Covid Testing Required for All Nursing Home Staff or Fines Ensue

All nursing homes must test their staff for Covid-19 regularly to detect exposure to the virus under new requirements CMS announced Tuesday.

There was “good compliance” with previous recommendations that nursing homes test staff routinely in surging states, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said in a press briefing. But “we want to make sure that every single nursing home is doing this, and if they are not then they’re going to face sanctions,” she said.

Nursing homes have been at the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic because elderly and frail people are most likely to die ...