The Department of Public Health will hold a public hearing on amendments to the following regulations: 105 CMR 721.000 – Standards for Prescription Format and Security in Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts Legislature has appointed a six-member conference committee which has begun deliberations on reconciling the differences between the House and Senate's FY 2020 budget recommendations.

Mass Senior Care Member Sherrill House hosted State Representative Nika Elugardo (D-Boston) at their facility recently. Photo (L-R): Isabel Torres, Legislative Aide; Patrick Stapleton, CEO of Sherrill House; State Representative Nika Elugardo; Karen Soorian, Director of Community Outreach and Volunteer Services; and The Very Reverend Tom Kennedy, Board Chairman

U.S. Congresswoman Lori Trahan (Center) with Mass Senior Care Leaders Leaders of Mass Senior Care Association took to Capitol Hill to advocate during AHCA/NCAL's Annual Congressional Briefing this week. Matt Salmon, Mass Senior Care Chairman, Bill Bogdanovich, MSCA Board Member & Foundation President, Tom Lavalle, MSCA Board Member, Holly Jarek, MSCA Member, Tara Gregorio, MSCA President and Jennifer Chen MSCA Director of Membership met with the Massachusetts Congressional delegation to discuss the critical need to protect and preserve Medicare funding

The US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released its updated list which reflects all OIG exclusions and reinstatement actions up to, and including, those taken in May 2019. This new file is meant to replace the updated List of Excluded Individuals/Entities (LEIE) database file available for download last month. Individuals and entities that have been reinstated to the federal health care programs are not included in this file. The updated files are posted

Earlier this week the Senate Committee on Aging released a list of nursing facilities that are considered to be "candidates" for the Special Focus Facility (SFF) program. CMS has since indicated that the agency will be publishing an updated SFF "candidate" list monthly on the Nursing Home Compare website and is developing further transparency tools to be launched at a later date. AHCA has provided the following summary on how the candidate list is created for the SFF program: CMS

The Department of Public Health's Determination of Need (DoN) program has issued a memorandum listing proposed guidelines for applications for new long term care beds, ending the longstanding moratorium that has been in place since March 1992. This action is a result of the Department's review following issuance of last December's Circular Letter in regard to the new process for Long-Term Care Facility Beds Out of Service (BOOS). At that time the Department indicated it would review the scope of