Seema Verma, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told Breitbart News exclusively that New York’s Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other Democrat governors originally issued guidance that contradicted federal guidelines for nursing homes battling the coronavirus pandemic.
“I just want to make it very clear that our guidance was absolutely crystal clear,” Verma said in an exclusive interview late last week. “It was clear and unmistakable. Any insinuation to the contrary is woefully mistaken at best and dishonest at worst. We put out our guidance on March 13. It’s very clear when it says that, I’m actually going to read this to you, it says that: ‘When should a nursing home accept a resident who is diagnosed with COVID-19?’ It says: ‘A nursing home can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19 and still under transmission-based precautions,’ which means if this person is infectious you have to take precautions. It says ‘as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance for transmission-based precautions.’ It says: ‘If a nursing home cannot, it must wait until these precautions are discontinued,’ meaning if you are not able to care for this patient—somebody is still positive and you’re not equipped to care for the patient, then you shouldn’t accept the patient into your care. That’s really important because longstanding discharge—when you’re discharging a patient from the hospital, longstanding guidelines require when you transfer them somewhere you transfer them to a place that can take care of their needs whether they’re going home or they’re going to a nursing home or some other facility.”-- More...
