CMS Revises Enforcement Guidance—Again
After the publication of our Legal Alert on the Supreme Court decision lifting the stay on the Omnibus COVID-19 Health Care Staff Vaccination Interim Final Rule (the “Rule”) published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”), CMS released additional updates to its interpretive guidance that moved the goalposts (again) for certain states. The new guidance, published on January 14, 2022, can be found here. The states affected by the new guidance are the states previously subject to stays in the Fifth and Eighth Circuits: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. The new guidance does not apply to states where the CMS Rule was not previously stayed or to Texas, where the CMS Rule is still subject to a preliminary injunction in a separate legal action that was not before the Supreme Court. To learn more, click here.