Home Health & Hospice Week

Will drive-through vaccinations help?

More home health and hospice staff and their patients are getting vaccinated for COVID-19, but the rate is still slower than hoped.

Some states are continuing vaccination of home health and hospice staff while others are just starting.

In Ohio: Like in many states, the exact process of vaccination depends on where you are located. “Ohio is distributing [vaccines] county by county … so the process varies by county,” relates Joe Russell with the Ohio Council for Home Care & Hospice. “This has generated some confusion given that most of our agencies operate in multiple counties. Some of the more sophisticated county boards are further along than others, but discernable progress is being made,” Russell tells AAPC. Some counties are conducting drive-through vaccination stations, others are scheduling appointments person by person, and some are doing whole “pods” at once. “It just depends,” he says.

Some good news is that the state is communicating well on the issue, Russell says. “We’re getting vaccinated. It’s just going to take time,” he adds.

In Oregon: Oregon Health & Science University partnered with the SEIU on a drive-through vaccination clinic on Jan. 10, with a goal of vaccinating the state’s 32,000 home-health care workers and their patients, reports Oregon Public Broadcasting. SEIU 503 head Melissa Unger said home care workers are one example of a group that’s especially vulnerable to COVID-19 but easily left out of a vaccination campaign. They lack a central employer, speak a variety of languages and may not have their own transportation. “They will get lost in this process,” Unger told OPB. “We need to make sure there is a track that is completely focused on high risk, vulnerable, difficult to reach populations.”

In Pennsylvania: Philadelphia set up a mass vaccination site at the Pennsylvania Convention Center to inoculate home health workers on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9, reports public radio station WHYY. The clinic aimed to vaccinate 2,400 home health workers after contacting nearly 100 home health agencies in the city. The overflow wait list had more than 1,000 workers on it, the station reports.

One reason the city targeted home care workers is the racial disparity so far observed in those getting vaccinated, said Deputy Health Commissioner Caroline Johnson. “We made the intentional decision to say OK, we want to get this vaccine into those communities early, we are going to specifically invite this population that is very heavily weighted towards persons of color,” Johnson told WHYY.

In Illinois: Thousands of non-facility-related health care workers in Chicago still need to be vaccinated, reports public radio station WBEZ. The city is setting up more vaccination sites to get available doses to those workers, including home health workers, as quickly as possible, said Chicago’s Commissioner of Public Health Dr. Allison Arwady. One hitch — a sizable percentage of workers are waiting to see how getting both doses of vaccination goes for their peers before initiating their own, Arwady told WBEZ.

Meanwhile, as vaccination rates ramp up, home care providers may be more open to making them mandatory. In a survey conducted by technology provider Axxess, nearly three-quarters of respondents from large “care at home” organizations indicated their organization would require COVID-19 vaccinations, the company reports.

Requiring vaccinations can come with complex legal issues, experts warn (see more on that topic in HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXIX, No. 45).