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House Passed Continuing Resolution Fails in the Senate; Shutdown Looking More Likely
On September 19, both the House and the Senate voted on H.R. 5371, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026. This version of a continuing resolution passed the House and failed in the Senate. The Senate also voted on the Democrats’ version of a continuing resolution, S. 2882, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions and Others Matter Act, 2026. This also failed. More details on the votes and the outlook can be found in this article.
Infection Preventionist Training from CDC Renewed
The Nursing Home Infection Preventionist training made available by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) has been renewed for another two-year period. This 23-module training is free and helps satisfy requirements from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that nursing homes designate an individual to serve as Infection Preventionist who meets specific education and experience requirements and has completed specialized training in infection prevention and control.
Infection preventionists who have previously completed the CDC’s training course do not need to take it again; however, recall that CMS’s expectation as outlined in the Long-Term Care Surveyor Guidance is that the infection preventionist “should remain current with infection prevention and control issues and be aware of national organizations’ guidelines as well as those from national/state/local public health authorities (e.g., emerging pathogens).” It is recommended that more than one individual working in the nursing home complete this or similar training to ensure coverage in the event of unexpected leave or turnover.
OIG Investigation: Nursing Home Falls Significantly Underreported
The Health & Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report and related data snapshot on September 18 asserting significant underreporting of falls with major injury in nursing homes. The investigation compared hospital claims data to Minimum Data Set (MDS) assessments submitted for Medicare beneficiaries during a one-year period and found that 43% of falls with major injury reported through hospital Medicare claims data were not congruently coded on residents’ discharge MDS assessments preceding the hospitalization.
Noting that MDS data on falls with major injury are used to calculated quality measures on the consumer-facing Nursing Home Care Compare website, OIG recommended that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) take steps to ensure the completeness and accuracy of MDS data, and explore whether approaches to improve the quality measures related to falls could similarly be used to improve the accuracy of other quality measures.
A Technical Expert Panel (TEP) was previously convened on this topic and CMS recently made the summary report from the TEP publicly available. The TEP examined ways to improve the cross-setting quality measure by incorporating hospital claims data based on ICD-10 code diagnoses. While CMS has not yet announced any changes to the Falls with Major Injury quality measures, utilized for both nursing home and home health providers, LeadingAge notes that CMS has actively moved to incorporate the use of claims data to improve other quality measures.
CMS announced in June 2025 that claims data would be incorporated in the long-stay antipsychotics measure used in nursing homes beginning in October 2025. This implementation date has now been pushed back to January 2026; however, the incorporation of claims data in the antipsychotics measure coupled with OIG’s recommendations related to the Falls with Major Injury measures could indicate a strong likelihood of CMS taking up this recommendation, as well as continuing to incorporate claims data into other measures.
Weekly Recaps: September 24, 2025
