Home Health & Hospice Week

Vax-or-test is gone, but some responsibilities remain.

If you fail to comply with requirements under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s previous COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standards rule, you could pay with punishing fines.

Reminder: OSHA released its COVID-19 ETS rule last June. It contained a raft of requirements, including developing and implementing a COVID-19 plan, screening employees and removing those who are infected, furnishing personal protective equipment, providing time off for vaccinations, recording and reporting COVID-related events, and more (see HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXX, No. 22).

Then on Dec. 27, 2021, OSHA announced it was “withdrawing the non-recordkeeping portions of the healthcare ETS” in part because it expected “a final rule cannot be completed in a timeframe approaching the one contemplated by the OSH Act,” according to a release on its website. Observers thought many of the requirements might be covered by either the CMS or OSHA vaccination mandate rules.

Now that the OSHA vaccination-or-test mandate rule seems to be sidelined permanently, what should providers do?

“Employers covered by OSHA’s previous Healthcare ETS must continue to follow the recordkeeping and reporting obligations under that rule and should highly consider continuing to follow the related PPE and Respiratory Protection Standards as advised by OSHA,” advise attorneys Jessica Biondo, Jon Bumgarner, Drew Howk, Jon Rabin, Robin Sheridan, and Dana Stutzman with law firm Hall Render in online analysis.

Home health and hospice agencies may want to go a step further. The National Association for Home Care & Hospice “recommends that home care companies return to focus on the expired OSHA Healthcare ETS, as it may be the next generation of OSHA action as it is more targeted to a specific workplace hazard,” the trade group says in its member newsletter.

Note: See OSHA’s Dec. 27 notice at www.osha.gov/coronavirus/ets.