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ARN Board Member Mary Ellen Hatch explores long-term COVID-19 implications in new article​ 

Last year began with plans to celebrate nurses as the World Health Organization designated 2020 as The Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. Then just a few months into the new year, the COVID-19 pandemic created a massive challenge that nurses and healthcare providers worldwide stepped up to handle. Now as these same nurses and healthcare providers begin reflecting on the past year to both continue fighting COVID-19 as well as to begin assessing how to take steps into a post-pandemic future, leaders like Mary Ellen Hatch, MSN RN CRRN, are beginning to publish their insights and experiences.  

On July 15, the Coalition to Preserve Rehabilitation (CPR, of which ARN is a member) submitted a letter to Congress requesting that the next COVID legislative package include a "reset" of the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act. The IMPACT Act, enacted in 2014, requires that CMS work to implement a unified payment system for all four settings of post-acute care (SNFs, IRFs, HHAs, and LTCHs). Due to the recent implementation of new individual payment systems and policies in PAC settings and the ongoing impact of the COVID pandemic, CPR and other stakeholders have requested that Congress reset the timeline of the IMPACT Act and reevaluate whether a unified PAC payment system is appropriate for beneficiaries in need of post-acute care. Read the full letter.