Next month, CMS will release its Interim Final Rule with a comment period on the mandate for skilled nursing facilities, but also hospitals, dialysis facilities, ambulatory surgical centers and home health agencies, to vaccinate their staff or risk losing Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Even before the announcement and the FDA’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine in August, many senior care companies already issued mandates, like Atria Senior Living, LCS and Five Star Senior Living, just to name a few. But we have not heard many concrete data on staff resignations as a result of these mandates, since that is a great fear for the industry. Anecdotally, the results and predicted outcomes are all over the map, from minuscule losses in staff to large-scale walk-outs.
As of September 5, about 63.7% of staff per facility were vaccinated, up from 60.5% on August 8. That leaves a huge portion of staff that these mandates would apply to. And a survey recently came out showing that 92% of unvaccinated respondents either plan to find other employment where vaccines are not required or are simply unsure of their future employment status with regards to the mandate. We’ll see if those numbers hold true when push comes to shove.
In a show of transparency that we love to see, last week, Five Star Senior Living revealed that 4.3% of employees voluntarily terminated their employment by the company’s September 1st deadline to get vaccinated. We don’t know about any involuntary terminations.
That figure is no doomsday scenario but also applies to a company providing a lower service (thus lower staff) at high margins. For nursing homes, the mandate would likely have a far greater impact. It’s not going to be easy.
