Home Health & Hospice Week

Requirement for employers with 100+ employees may apply to you, even if Medicare mandate doesn’t.

If you haven’t already implemented a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for your staff, your time is about up.

“The Biden-Harris Administration will require COVID-19 vaccination of staff within all Medicare and Medicaid-certified facilities to protect both them and patients from the virus and its more contagious Delta variant,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said in a Sept. 9 release. “Facilities across the country should make efforts now to get health care staff vaccinated to make sure they are in compliance when the rule takes effect.”

For home health and hospice agencies hoping that “facilities” language meant the requirement didn’t apply to them, give up that hope. “Facilities” include home health and hospice agencies, CMS specifies on its website.

The requirement will become part of providers’ Medicare Conditions of Participation, it appears.

The mandate is drawing praise from industry trade groups. The National Association for Home Care & Hospice “has encouraged vaccinations throughout the pandemic. We look forward to seeing the details of the President’s Executive Order,” NAHC President Bill Dombi said in a cautious response to the news.

“I am pleased to see this NHPCO recommendation going into effect,” said National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization President Edo Banach in a release. “This requirement will improve health and safety for health workers, volunteers, patients, and their families. And, because it applies so broadly, it will also help address staffing challenges within the healthcare sector.”

“Ensuring that all frontline health care staff are vaccinated just makes sense,” said LeadingAge President Katie Smith Sloan in a release. LeadingAge, represents nonprofit aging services providers, including nursing homes, home health and hospice providers and senior living communities, and is a Visiting Nurse Associations of America affiliate. “This action not only shores up protection for older adults who move across care settings, but also levels the playing field among providers competing for in-demand health care workers,” said Smith Sloan.

The downside, of course, is that a vaccination mandate will make a tight staffing environment even tighter. “Home health providers … recognize the importance of maintaining staffing levels to ensure we can meet the growing healthcare demands of older Americans, especially as our nation faces a nursing workforce shortage,” said Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare’s Joanne Cunningham. “Our sector welcomes the opportunity to work collaboratively with the Administration as they develop this policy to ensure we can properly address workforce concerns while maintaining the human resources we need to meet our patients’ needs.”

The deadline for the new requirement is still hazy, but it is likely to be sooner rather than later. “CMS is developing an Interim Final Rule with Comment Period that will be issued in October,” it says.

The requirement comes under the “Vaccinating the Unvaccinated” prong of President Biden’s six-pronged “Path Out of the Pandemic” action plan.

A matter of time? Agencies that don’t receive Medicare or Medicaid funding may be relieved to hear that the new mandate won’t apply to them. “CMS told NAHC that the ‘staff vaccination requirement would only apply to Medicare and Medicaid-certified provider and supplier types that are regulated under the Conditions of Participation. If an entity is not regulated under the CoPs, then this requirement would not apply,” the trade group reports in its member newsletter.

However, another of the action items in the “Vaccinating the Unvaccinated” prong may give them a similar requirement, although with a testing option. “The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is developing a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work,” Biden’s plan says. “OSHA will issue an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to implement this requirement. This requirement will impact over 80 million workers in private sector businesses with 100+ employees.”

Note: See the pandemic action plan at www.whitehouse.gov/covidplan.