CMS: Final rule establishes emergency preparedness requirements

Editor's Note

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on September 16 released its final rule on “Emergency preparedness requirements for Medicare and Medicaid participating providers and suppliers.”

The rule establishes requirements to plan for natural and man-made disasters and coordinate with federal, state, tribal, regional, and local emergency preparedness systems.

Before the final rule was published, the ASCAssociation (ASCA) expressed concerns to CMS that certain hospital requirements were not applicable to ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs).

In the final rule, ASCs are exempt from providing occupancy information that CMS proposed for hospitals, and ASCs will not have to provide for subsistence needs of the patients and staff, ASCA reports.