Category Posts

Earlier this week President Joe Biden signed the SAVES LIVES Act into law which allows the VA to provide COVID-19 vaccinations to all Veterans, their spouses and caregivers. This act removed some prior legal limits the VA can provide to Veterans based on health care eligibility and priority groups. Vaccinations will still be priortized based on vaccine availability and Veterans enrolled in VA care.

For more information, read the full press release from the Office of Public and Intergovernmental...

Please take action today by reaching out to your Senators asking them to support S.748 - Medicare Sequestration Relief.

If you recall late last year, legislation passed to extend the 2% sequestration relief to March 31, 2021 - that’s next week!

Congress passed H.R.1868 last week to continue the pause of the 2% Medicare sequestration cuts through the duration of the public health emergency, but we need it to make it through the Senate too.

So please...

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Changes

Mark Higley, vice president of Regulatory Affairs has analyzed the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Tax Treatment for Federal and State Taxes. Below is the summary of the federal taxes. For the full analysis and commentary, please click HERE. 

Federal

On January 6, 2021, the IRS released Revenue Ruling 2021-02 that declares its previous Notice 2020-32 superseded. Notice 2020-32 stated expenses paid with PPP loan proceeds expected to be forgiven were not deductible. However,...

According to a White House press release the Paycheck Protection Program will, for a period of 14 days, only be available to businesses with fewer than 20 employees. The 2-week period is scheduled to begin Wednesday, February 24, and is being implemented in an effort to make sure that these very small businesses do not get excluded from receiving money through the program.

In addition to that 2-week period to focus on very small businesses, other changes being made to the Paycheck Protection...

Mark Higley presented at the 2020 HME News Business Summit Sept. 15–17. His session, “The 14th Annual HME News/VGM Group Financial Benchmarking Survey,” included a series of data, trends, and analysis as to the state of the industry from 2010 to the present, as well as financial and operational highlights from supplier submissions applicable to their 2019 results. This report is a summarized version of the presentation.

Be sure to sign up for our upcoming webinar, "VGM Government PPP and EIDL Update," on Feb. 9 at 2 p.m. CT!

Through the passage of yet another piece of legislation related to COVID-19 relief, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, additional funding has been added to two separate and popular programs designed to help small businesses access forgivable dollars to help them survive the COVID-19 pandemic. The two programs in question are the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the...

For providers who received more than $10,000 in total payments from the HHS Provider Relief Fund (PRF), HHS is requiring those providers to submit at least one report, and possibly a second report, showing how the funds were utilized. Initially, HHS had said that the reporting portal would open on January 15th, and that the first report for all providers would be due no later than February 15th. The portal did indeed open on January 15th, but the only thing providers can do at this point is register...

We are continuing to collect information from our VGM members, state associations, and other sources on the COVID-19 vaccine distribution. Click here to see the data currently collected of how individual states are handing the distribution and whether HME providers are currently able to receive the vaccination.

If you have information that is not on this spreadsheet regarding availability to HME providers, or any resourceful links, please send to [email protected]

On Thursday, January 7, 2021, former HHS Secretary Alex Azar announced an extension of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE). This PHE was initially declared on January 31, 2020 (with acknowledgement that it has existed since January 27th). Any PHE declaration can only last for 90 days at a time, but can be extended or renewed. It has already been renewed multiple time throughout 2020, and the 90 day extension that occurred in October 2020 was set to expire on or around January 21. There...