HHS Attestation Update

As AMA reported in the AMA Advocacy Update of May 22, HHS announced that providers need to take action by June 3, 2020 regarding the CARES Act Provider Relief Fund distribution of the first $50 billion, referred to as the General Distribution. Specifically, HHS indicated that by June 3, those who had received funds need to accept the HHS Terms and Conditions and submit revenue information to be considered for an additional General Allocation payment. Subsequently, HHS announced that it had extended the attestation deadline for an additional 45 days, but the June 3 deadline has remained on the Provider Relief Fund website. The AMA asked HHS why the website still has a deadline of June 3 when the attestation deadline has been further extended. The department’s response is below. Physicians should also be aware that this site is frequently revised and that new FAQs were added as recently as May 29.

HHS response:

Folks will have a total of 90 days to attest.  However, they will only have until June 3 to access the application portal to submit their revenue / loss information.

Folks must accept or reject funds in order to enter the application portal.

So, if on June 3 folks are still deciding whether to accept funds they have already received, but haven’t yet submitted their tax information to the application portal, they should (1) reject the funds; (2) submit info to the application portal for consideration.

They will be reallocated all General Distribution funds they are owed based on their submitted application, and will then have 90 days to attest or reject.

We have implemented this so that we can have all applications by June 3, and can start rolling out other distributions.

The attestation portal (as opposed to the application portal) will remain open for 90 days.  Only the application portal will close on June 3.