Home Health & Hospice Week

If you base your masking and other COVID prevention procedures on CDC guidance, it’s time to take another look at them.

On Sept. 23, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention loosened up its masking guidance. “Guidance has been updated based on currently available information about COVID-19 and the current situation in the United States,” the CDC says on its webpage for healthcare infection control. “Updates were made to reflect the high levels of vaccine-and infection-induced immunity and the availability of effective treatments and prevention tools,” the agency explains.

“This guidance provides a framework for facilities to implement select infection prevention and control practices (e.g., universal source control) based on their individual circumstances (e.g., levels of community transmission),” the CDC says. “Source control” is CDC lingo for wearing masks.

You, too: “This guidance is applicable to all U.S. settings where healthcare is delivered (including nursing homes and home health),” the CDC says.

In short, providers including home health agencies can suspend mask-wearing requirements if they are in counties that don’t have “high” COVID transmission rates. That’s currently only about one-fourth of the country.

But that’s not the whole story. “Employers should be aware that other local, territorial, tribal, state, and federal requirements may apply, including those promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA),” the CDC notes in the guidance.

For example, in Massachusetts, the state Department of Public Health still requires patients, residents, staff, vendors, and visitors to wear masks in all health care settings, reports the Boston Globe newspaper. The state is reviewing the CDC recommendations, though, the Globe notes.

And the new CDC guidance says “HCP and healthcare facilities might also consider using or recommending source control when caring for patients who are moderately to severely immunocompromised.” That “immunocompromised” category likely includes most home health patients.

“The CDC’s really not opening the gates. It’s saying, ‘go slowly,’” says Paul Lanziko, the former executive director of North Shore Elder Services, according to the Globe.