Questions for CMS? Email Jodi
Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Division of Nursing Homes for our quarterly meeting soon and we’d love to hear from you. Do you have any questions or concerns you would like for us to bring up on your behalf? We are unable to advocate on specific member issues like survey citations during this meeting but if there are general concerns that could affect all nursing homes or need for clarification around policies like the Requirements of Participation or the Five Star Quality Rating System, please send them to Jodi Eyigor jeyigor@leadingage.org by Wednesday, May 20.
Anti-Fraud Taskforce Announcements
On May 13, VP Vance, CMS Administrator Oz, CMS Deputy Administrator and COO Kim Brandt, and head of the Anti-Fraud Taskforce Andrew Ferguson held a press conference at the White House. The press conference announced $1.3 billion dollars in Medicaid dollars being deferred from California, a new Medicaid oversight initiative focused on Medicaid Fraud Investigation Units (MFCUS), and Medicare enrollment moratoria for six months on new providers of hospice and home health. An article on the press conference and its contents can be found here.
CMS’ Home Health and Hospice Moratorium: What Nonprofit Providers Need to Know
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a moratorium on enrollment of new home health and hospice agencies. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026 had language that prohibited hospices from using telehealth for face-to-face recertifications during a moratorium. CMS said in frequently asked questions (FAQs) published at the time of the announcement that hospices could continue to use telehealth for the face-to-face recertification during the moratorium but did not provide further details on their legal analysis or how they were instructing their contractors at this time.
This six-month effort is intended to prevent new bad actors from entering Medicare while the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services takes action to identify, investigate, and remove those already exploiting the system.
Read LeadingAge’s analysis regarding what non-profit, mission-driven agencies can expect here. Our press release on the announcement can be found here.
Bill Introduced Giving States Authority to Enforce MA Compliance
Congressman Troy Downing (R-MT) introduced HR 8726, the Protecting Authority and Restoring Tools Necessary for Enforcement by Regulatory States Act of 2026 on May 11. This bill gives each state the authority to ensure Medicare Advantage (MA) organizations that offer plans in their state are following federal regulations related to MA. It also requires U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary to coordinate the state enforcement of MA regulations and permits this coordination to occur via a collaborative enforcement agreement. The bill does not define the structure or content of such an agreement. Several states’ attorneys general have been asking for such authority. The bill itself is very short. It is not clear if the language also allows states to ensure MA plans are following Medicare regulations related to what services must be covered and not developing their own internal coverage criteria.
LeadingAge has been pushing for better MA compliance and federal enforcement of the regulations to ensure timely beneficiary access to Medicare covered services and a lower burden on providers. For this reason, we support efforts to bring more enforcers into the oversight activity and think it is appropriate for states to undertake this activity, as long as there is coordination and aggregation of enforcement activities to identify broader non-compliance issues and trends, nationally.
Weekly Recaps: May 20, 2026
- There is no Affordable Housing recap this week.
- Home Health Weekly Recap
- Hospice Weekly Recap
- Life Plan Community Weekly Recap
- Medicaid, HCBS, and PACE Weekly Recap
- Nursing Home Weekly Recap
- Workforce Policy Weekly Recap
