Home Health & Hospice Week

You’ll need to make some quick decisions about your COVID-19 staff vaccination policies, if you haven’t done so yet, legal experts advise.

Why? The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ final rule published in the June 5 Federal Register withdraws COVID-19 vaccination mandates effective Aug. 4, point out attorneys Timothy J. Fry, Kristen H. Chang, Garrison B. Ambrose, Sophie Mouros, and Petra D. Walech with law firm McGuireWoods. (See rule details in HHHW by AAPC, Vol. XXXII, No. 20.)

Providers can feel free to drop the mandate, unless it’s required by their state or city. But keep in mind that “CMS will continue to encourage Medicare- and Medicaid-certified providers to encourage their staff members, as well as patients and other industry participants, to receive COVID-19 vaccines,” Fry, Chang, Ambrose, Mouros, and Walech note in online analysis.

And don’t be surprised to see “new [quality] metrics in subsequent rulemaking” related to these vaccinations, they add.

On the other hand, if you decide to drop the requirement for your staff, you may not need to wait all the way until August. “Because facilities are no longer operating under [public health emergency] circumstances, and considering the lower policy priority of enforcement within the remaining time, CMS will not enforce staff vaccine provisions that remain effective in the regulations through the final rule’s effective date, Aug. 4, 2023,” the McGuireWoods attorneys predict.

Keep in mind: “Without federal mandates … providers may find it difficult to keep staff requirements in place — even if courts typically have allowed such requirements,” the lawyers advise. “Local conditions and vaccination views will similarly impact such choices now that the federal mandate has ended,” they say.