Nursing homes in Colorado began receiving money Wednesday from the federal government for keeping the coronavirus out of their facilities and for keeping their morbidity rates down.

The incentive program is run by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, and it has distributed nearly $1 billion since September to nursing homes. In Colorado, 179 facilities received a little over $3 million for their September performance, according to HHS and the Colorado Health Care Association’s Doug Farmer. 

This latest batch of payments, which started shipping Wednesday, will benefit 138 Colorado facilities to the tune of $8.3 million. In all, more than 9,000 nursing homes nationwide will share $532.3 million in new federal money. That’s on top of the $331 million distributed earlier this fall.

According to data provided by HHS, payments to Colorado nursing homes range from several hundred dollars to more than $75,000. 

Farmer said this latest payment is for facilities’ performance in October; a final payment will take into account the total success of nursing homes.

He said that HHS gathered data each day on nursing homes to gauge how they were handling their own internal community spread compared to the community outside the facilities’ walls. The homes’ mortality rates are also taken into account in the incentives.

“Additional payments right now for these providers is desperately needed,” Farmer said. “I think the part that’s been a little bit challenging is that (the payments are) based on a formula. and so there are a lot of providers that have worked very hard, spent a lot of money to keep coronavirus all the way out of their facilities, and haven’t had any cases. And they’re not getting payments because they’re in a community that, compared to the rest of nation, has low transmission. … That’s a challenge, but obviously I think anytime they can put more resources in the hands of our health care providers, it’s good.”

Nursing homes in Colorado and nationwide have been particularly at risk; given their communal settings and the age and health considerations of their residents, outbreaks within the facilities often spiral and cause much higher levels of mortality than outbreaks in prisons or college dorms.