Home Health & Hospice Week

Despite the severe staffing shortage under COVID-19, multiple states have announced requirements for health care workers to have COVID-19 vaccinations — including those working for home health, hospice, and private duty agencies.

States have “exhausted” incentives to get residents vaccinated and the Delta variant continues to help COVID spread. So some “have announced that, in essence, they are requiring certain categories of workers to be vaccinated,” notes law firm Littler Mendelson in online analysis.

States with mandates that apply to home care workers include California, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island, Littler reports. (See the status of vaccination requirements for every state at www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/mandatory-employee-vaccines-coming-state-near-you). Other states like Massachusetts are in the process of trying to get such mandates implemented.

The mandates have generally been met with dismay by home care agencies. The Rhode Island Partnership for Home Care is calling on the state government to exempt home care workers from Rhode Island’s health care worker vaccination mandate, reports the Providence Business News. The trade group says it's seeing hundreds of resignations from workers already, before the Oct. 1 deadline.

In New York, Home Care Association of New York State’s Al Cardillo told the New York State Department of Health board that “there are many providers, still with a substantial portion of the workforce, very reticent to be vaccinated. Much of our workforce comes from minority communities and other communities with cultural considerations where there’s resistance to vaccination,” Cardillo said in the Aug. 26 meeting, according to the Rochester, New York Democrat & Chronicle newspaper. New York will require vaccinations by Oct. 7.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows about half of American workers favor vaccination requirements at their workplaces, AP reports. The AP-NORC poll released Aug. 26 shows high support for vaccine mandates among those who say they work in person in a health care setting, with 70 percent approving of vaccine requirements at their workplace.

Meanwhile, more home care companies continue to use the carrot rather than stick approach. Omaha, Nebraska-based Right at Home is the latest home care company to partner with the National Minority Health Association in its “Flex for Checks” reward program, Right at Home says in a release. (See program details in HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXX, No. 30).