LeadingAge NY Urges Governor to Provide HERDS Reporting Relief to Providers
As members are aware, LeadingAge NY has been persistently advocating for relief from the onerous Health Emergency Response Data System (HERDS) surveys for our nursing home, adult care facility (ACF), home care, and hospice members. Most recently, we issued this letter to Governor Hochul and Department of Health (DOH) leadership recommending that they do away with the regular HERDS reporting for these provider types and instead adopt an “exception reporting” process by which only the most salient data points are collected if and when they occur. LeadingAge NY also outlined a variety of other interim strategies in the event that the State was unable to cease the regular reporting at this time.
We are pleased that one of our suggestions was adopted, and nursing home and ACF providers will experience some relief by no longer having to submit the report on weekends and state or federal holidays, starting June 11th. DOH communicated this reprieve in an email sent to providers, the text of which is provided below. LeadingAge NY understands that this is a small step, but we hope that it will enable our members an opportunity to take a break from work outside of typical working hours, when possible. In our letter, we again articulated the serious workforce challenges that face all of our provider members and the need to use our limited precious resources to meet the most urgent and pressing needs at this time. We requested a meeting with the Governor’s office to discuss further and try to arrive at additional solutions to provide relief to members across the continuum. We will keep members apprised of further developments with this issue.
Contact: Diane Darbyshire, ddarbyshire@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8828
Text of DOH email communicating change in HERDS reporting:
Good morning- The purpose of this correspondence is two-fold. First, effective Saturday, June 11, 2022, the Department will suspend daily COVID HERDS reporting for Hospitals, Nursing Homes and Adult Care Facilities on Saturdays, Sundays, and State and/or federal holidays. Monday through Friday daily reporting will continue, as will all other reporting requirements.
Secondly, we would like to take this opportunity to extend our sincere appreciation for your commitment to reporting this critical data to the Department for the past 27 months. The information your facility has provided has helped to inform decisions, calibrate protective policies and acted to save lives. On behalf of the entire Department, we wanted to make sure to extend our deepest appreciation.