Biden Administration Calls for Vaccine Mandates for All Medicare and Medicaid Health Settings

Thursday evening, the Biden Administration announced they 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. We believe 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. Our 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 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services expressing concerns with a mandate for only nursing homes. 
 
In addition to the vaccine mandate, other topics to highlight include: 

• DOL 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 Monoclonal antibodies.  
  • The U.S. 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% in September. 
  • Monoclonal antibody treatments have been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization by up to 70% 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. 

AHCA/NCAL will continue to keep you informed of any additional updates that may arise.

CMS updated SE20011 MLN Matters waiver billing guidance yesterday (see link).  They DID NOT change the blanket 3-day qualifying stay or spell-of-illness blanket waivers. 

CMS only added emphasis that all other coverage requirements including need for skilled level of care remain (page 13).  This is consistent with prior CMS and AHCA guidance.

Additionally CMS now notes that contractors will be monitoring and auditing as needed to verify that the need and delivery of a skilled level of care was present.