Nursing Homes Are Requiring Staff COVID 19 Vaccinations
Nursing Homes Are Requiring Staff COVID-19 Vaccinations Javascript must be enabled to use this site. Please enable Javascript in your browser and try again. × Search search POPULAR SEARCHES SUGGESTED LINKS Join AARP for just $9 per year when you sign up for a 5-year term. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. Leaving AARP.org Website You are now leaving AARP.org and going to a website that is not operated by AARP. A different privacy policy and terms of service will apply.
Getty Images For now, both CLC & Cappella and Asbury are sticking to strongly encouraging vaccinations, as they watch what other health care operators do. “We just want to play along with the larger group and really watch the health experts,” Leidig says.
AARP NEWSLETTERS %{ newsLetterPromoText }% %{ description }% Subscribe in a Kentucky nursing home where nearly 50 people were infected, including 18 fully vaccinated residents. Three residents — including one who was vaccinated — died. And while deaths from the virus have declined sharply this year, almost 900 residents still lost their lives to COVID-19 from mid-March to mid-April, AARP's analysis shows. And the virus continues to mutate, presenting an ongoing risk. “If we required all nursing home staff to be vaccinated, we would save a finite number of resident and staff lives,” Wasserman says. “I'm just not sure how to ignore that.”
More Nursing Homes Are Requiring Staff COVID-19 Vaccinations
More workers are getting inoculated and others are losing their jobs
Getty Images Aegis Living, a long-term care provider operating 33 assisted living, memory care and respite care communities in the western U.S., launched a COVID-19 vaccine education campaign in September, before the vaccines were even available. A vaccines researcher described how the shots are made, tested and authorized on a company-wide call for Aegis’ 2,200 residents and 2,500 workers. An Aegis employee and her family, who all contracted COVID-19 last year, joined another call to share their struggles. Residents and staff not yet convinced could get one-on-one sessions with a medical expert. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. "You just have to meet people where they are in their hesitations,” says Dwayne J. Clark, founder and CEO of Aegis. “We're asking them to put a foreign substance in their body. It's a big deal.” When COVID vaccines became available at year's end, Aegis enrolled in that brought on-site vaccinations to virtually all the country's nursing homes and assisted living facilities. By the end of March, all Aegis communities had hosted three rounds of vaccinations, with 95 percent of residents participating, mirroring . Nearly 90 percent of Aegis staff also opted in — much higher than the national staff uptake rate, which was . Still, around 300 employees remained unvaccinated. In April, as vaccine supply increased and everyone 16 and over became eligible for the shots, management announced that vaccinations for workers would be required — only those with a valid medical or religious reason were exempt. Since then, around 70 more workers have opted in, with more expected in the next month. But some workers are still resistant. Clark is expecting to terminate 100 workers after the July 1 deadline for vaccinations: “We know we're going to lose some really good people.” Across the country, a growing number of long-term care providers have started requiring COVID-19 vaccination for workers, citing low vaccine uptake rates, increased supply, more data supporting the safety and efficacy of the shots, and the continuing threat of the coronavirus as it evolves. Many more providers are mulling such mandates. "There is more interest in exploring the possibility,” says Ruth Katz, senior vice president of policy at LeadingAge, a national association representing 5,000 nonprofit aging services providers. In January, only a handful of member providers were making COVID-19 vaccines a condition of employment, she says. “Now, when we have a member talk about mandating, all ears are open.” But adopting a mandate is hardly an easy choice. Losing staff is a worry, and the industry already suffers from serious staffing shortages. Then there's the threat of litigation, given that COVID-19 vaccines are still only under emergency use authorization (EUA) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And some worker advocates question whether it's fair to mandate among a workforce that commonly experiences low pay and scant benefits, has been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, and is disproportionately made up of Black workers, who are more vaccine-wary "The question isn't whether or not vaccine mandates work — they do,” says Rachel Gur-Arie, a scholar at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Oxford who studies infectious diseases and ethics. The question, she says, is “At what price?”Mandates gain traction
COVID-19 devastated America's long-term care community, including nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other senior care settings, killing more than 180,000 residents and infecting more than 1.4 million, according to the . The virus is prone to spread in long-term care facilities, which account for almost a third of all U.S. coronavirus fatalities, due to required contact between staff and residents and close living quarters for residents who are often immunocompromised. But COVID infection and death rates in these settings have plummeted from their winter peaks, . At Aegis, no residents and only six staff members — five of whom were unvaccinated — have tested positive since its communities were fully vaccinated. During 2020, pre-vaccines, roughly 700 residents and staff members tested positive for COVID-19. To Clark, the turnaround justifies the decision to mandate vaccinations for workers. “We have 200 people that are angry at us, but I'll take that anger versus the loss of a resident's life,” he says. “The reward of saving lives and not going through this again is incredible." AARP NEWSLETTERS %{ newsLetterPromoText }% %{ description }% Subscribe from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that suggests employers have the legal right to require employees to show proof of vaccination, as long as they allow for medical or religious exemptions. Gostin says the EUA status of the vaccines doesn't matter: “I foresee legal challenges because the U.S. is so litigious, but I do not believe they will be successful.” Entertainment $3 off popcorn and soft drink combos See more Entertainment offers > The challenges are already rolling in. And roughly 40 states have seen bills introduced that would override the EEOC's ruling and prohibit employers from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of work, according to the . Arkansas and Montana have adopted them as law.Will workers walk
There's no official national count of how many long-term care staff members are vaccinated, but surveys suggest it's just over half of the long-term care workforce. That rate lags behind other frontline health care workers, such as those in hospitals and doctors’ offices, according to the and The Washington Post. Still, many operators are reluctant to introduce mandates. CLC & Cappella Living Solutions, a long-term care provider operating more than 20 communities across Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah, has been discouraged by insurance companies from mandating vaccines before they're fully approved by the FDA. Staffing shortages, a long-standing issue within the long-term care industry, have been exacerbated by the pandemic, with at least 20 percent of nursing homes nationwide reporting a shortage of nurses or aides every month since May 2020, according to . "We could lose people and we might not be able to replace them,” says Jill Vitale-Aussem, president and CEO of CLC & Cappella, where 73 percent of staff members have been vaccinated. “If we had a market of all these people that wanted to come work in all of our communities, it'd be a lot easier to mandate, but to put the residents at risk of not having people that care for them — that's something we think about all the time.” Among the 33 percent of workers still unvaccinated at Asbury's eight communities in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, many are women under 40 who are concerned about what effects the shots might have on their fertility. there's no evidence the COVID vaccines affect fertility, but there's limited research on the issue. To combat fears, Asbury has brought in medical experts, circulated myths-versus-facts sheets and hosted one-on-one and small-group sessions to discuss the issue with staff, but many remain hesitant. "That [demographic] is 30 percent of our workforce,” says Doug Leidig, president and CEO of Asbury Communities, “and it's a significant issue on their minds, so we're respecting that.” "If we mandate it,” he says, “people may say, ‘Well, I'll go work for the hospital or the retirement community across town that's not mandating it.'”Getty Images For now, both CLC & Cappella and Asbury are sticking to strongly encouraging vaccinations, as they watch what other health care operators do. “We just want to play along with the larger group and really watch the health experts,” Leidig says.
AARP NEWSLETTERS %{ newsLetterPromoText }% %{ description }% Subscribe in a Kentucky nursing home where nearly 50 people were infected, including 18 fully vaccinated residents. Three residents — including one who was vaccinated — died. And while deaths from the virus have declined sharply this year, almost 900 residents still lost their lives to COVID-19 from mid-March to mid-April, AARP's analysis shows. And the virus continues to mutate, presenting an ongoing risk. “If we required all nursing home staff to be vaccinated, we would save a finite number of resident and staff lives,” Wasserman says. “I'm just not sure how to ignore that.”