Biden Administration Calls for Vaccine Mandates for All Medicare and Medicaid Health Settings
The Biden Administration announced it will issue a regulation in early October mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for all Medicare and Medicaid health settings including hospitals, home health, and dialysis centers. This would require COVID-19 Vaccinations for over 17 million health care workers at Medicare and Medicaid participating hospitals and other health care settings. AHCA/NCAL believes that this mandate would apply to assisted living settings that accept Medicaid and will level the playing field to dissuade caregivers from transferring to jobs in other settings.
This is a victory for long term care providers, our staff, and residents. The AHCA/NCAL team has been working around the clock to convey the challenges that a mandate for only long term care staff would create. Following last month’s announcement requiring only nursing homes to mandate staff vaccination, AHCA/NCAL members sent in approximately 4,000 letters to CMS expressing concerns with a mandate for only nursing homes. Thank you for responding to this call to action that resulted in the wider approach to a mandate.
In addition to the vaccine mandate, other topics to highlight include:
- US Department of Labor requirement for employers with over 100 employees to have vaccine mandates and/or testing.
- All federal employees and contractors will also need to be vaccinated.
- Increase in test availability and making more test kits available (details forthcoming).
- Increase in use of monoclonal antibody therapies.
- The US government shipped an average of approximately 100,000 doses of free monoclonal antibodies per week across July and August, and will increase the pace of shipments by 50 percent in September.
- Monoclonal antibody treatments have been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization by up to 70 percent for unvaccinated people at risk of developing severe disease.
- As hospital systems experience increased COVID-19 cases, many have identified monoclonal antibody treatment as a key tool to improve health outcomes, prevent hospitalizations and reduce the strain on overburdened hospitals.
We will continue to keep you informed of any additional updates that may arise.
