What Can a Surveyor Cite You For That Didn't Exist on Thursday?
CMS rewrote the hospital and critical access hospital survey tags for emergency and obstetrical readiness on Friday, effective Friday, with no notice period and no provider education. Also this week: UnitedHealthcare put prior authorization back on eleven oncology J-codes, the October EDI edits got reissued for the third time, and the Coverage Database went eight days without publishing anything.
On Thursday there was no survey tag in Appendix A that let a surveyor cite your hospital for the contents of its postpartum hemorrhage protocol.
On Friday there was.
CMS issued Transmittal 248 on September 18, revising Appendix A of the State Operations Manual, and Transmittal 247 the same day doing the same work in Appendix W for critical access hospitals.
Effective date on both: September 18, 2026. Implementation date: the same.
No comment period, no provider education section, and no funding.
Everything else Medicare and UnitedHealthcare published this week comes with three and a half months of runway.
"What can a surveyor write you up for today that they could not have written you up for on Wednesday?"
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