NOVEL CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC ("COVID-19")

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2023

Unusual or Infrequent Items, or Both [Abstract]

On March 27, 2020, the CARES Act was signed into legislation. The CARES Act provided for $175 billion to healthcare providers, including hospitals on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of this total allocated amount, $30 billion was distributed immediately to providers based on their proportionate share of Medicare fee-for-service reimbursements in 2019. Healthcare providers were required to sign an attestation confirming receipt of the Provider Relief Fund ("PRF") funds and agree to the terms and conditions of payment. Our home health and hospice segments received approximately $100 million from the first $30 billion of funds distributed to healthcare providers in April 2020, which is inclusive of $2 million related to our joint venture care centers (equity method investments). We also acquired approximately $6 million of PRF funds in connection with the acquisition of AseraCare Hospice ("AseraCare"). Under the terms and conditions for receipt of the payment, we were allowed to use the funds to cover lost revenues and health care costs related to COVID-19 through June 30, 2021, and we were required to properly and fully document the use of these funds in reports to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS"). All required reporting was completed during the three-month period ended September 30, 2021, and our audit report was submitted to HHS on September 26, 2022.

For our wholly-owned subsidiaries, we utilized PRF funds to the extent we had qualifying COVID-19 expenses; we did not use PRF funds to cover lost revenues resulting from COVID-19. The grant income associated with the COVID-19 expenses incurred through June 30, 2021 is reflected in other operating income within our consolidated statements of operations.

We did not fully utilize the funds received; all unutilized funds were repaid in October 2021. In summary, the total funds that we received from the CARES Act PRF were accounted for as follows (amounts in millions):


	Amount
Funds utilized through June 30, 2021 by consolidated entities	$	46.6
Funds repaid to the government by consolidated entities (excludes $0.2 million of interest repaid)	58.3
Funds utilized through June 30, 2021 by unconsolidated joint ventures	1.3
Funds repaid to the government by unconsolidated joint ventures	0.6
	$	106.8

The CARES Act also provided for the temporary suspension of the 2% reduction of Medicare claim reimbursements ("sequestration") for the period May 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020. During 2020 and 2021, Congress passed additional COVID-19 relief legislation which extended the 2% suspension of sequestration through March 31, 2022; sequestration was reinstated as a 1% reduction to Medicare claim reimbursements effective April 1, 2022 and a 2% reduction to Medicare claim reimbursements effective July 1, 2022. We recognized benefits to net service revenue totaling $13 million and $36 million during 2022 and 2021, respectively.

Additionally, the CARES Act provided for the deferral of the employer share of social security tax (6.2%), effective for payments due after the enactment date through December 31, 2020. During 2020, we deferred payment of approximately $55 million of social security taxes. Approximately $27 million was paid during December 2021; the remaining balance was paid during December 2022.