CMS to Require COVID-19 Vaccinations of Nursing Home Staff
- August 20, 2021
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) plans to issue an emergency regulation soon that will require nursing homes, as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid, to ensure all staff are vaccinated for COVID-19, the agency announced August 18.
The vaccination requirement will apply to the more than 15,000 nursing homes nationwide, CMS said. The agency expects to issue the regulation in September under its authority to establish requirements to ensure resident health and safety.
According to CMS, about 38% of nursing home staff are currently unvaccinated. The move comes as the number of cases among nursing home residents is on the rise, from a low of 319 cases on June 27 to 2,696 cases on August 8, CMS noted.
“Keeping nursing home residents and staff safe is our priority. The data are clear that higher levels of staff vaccination are linked to fewer outbreaks among residents, many of whom are at an increased risk of infection, hospitalization, or death,” said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.
"With this announcement, I’m using the power of the federal government, as a payer of healthcare costs, to ensure we reduce those risks to our most vulnerable seniors,” President Biden said in August 18 remarks.
American Health Care Association President and CEO Mark Parkinson, however, raised concerns about the plan to single out nursing home providers with the COVID-19 vaccination requirement. Parkinson argued that unless vaccination mandates for health care personnel are applied to all health care settings, nursing home providers will face workforce shortages.
“Focusing only on nursing homes will cause vaccine hesitant workers to flee to other health care providers and leave many centers without adequate staff to care for residents. It will make an already difficult workforce shortage even worse,” Parkinson said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Biden announced this week other measures aimed at curbing the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant, including his administration’s plan to launch a booster program for those who are eight months past their second mRNA shot.
Biden said the booster program, subject to the Food and Drug Administration conducting an independent evaluation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices issuing booster dose recommendations, would launch the week of September 20.