Feds to require staff vaccinations for nursing homes to keep Medicaid, Medicare $; impact likely heaviest in rural areas

Nursing homes will lose their federal Medicare and Medicaid funding unless all employees are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, President Biden announced Wednesday. 

"The new mandate, in the form of a forthcoming regulation to be issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, could take effect as soon as next month," Zeke Miller reports for The Associated Press. "Hundreds of thousands of nursing-home workers are not vaccinated, according to federal data, despite those facilities bearing the brunt of the early Covid-19 outbreak and their workers being among the first in the country to be eligible for shots."

The new rule will likely have an outsized effect on nursing homes in rural areas, where overall vaccination rates are lower and where seniors are more likely to rely on Medicaid to pay for nursing home stays. "Nationally, about 60 percent of nursing home staff are vaccinated – much lower than the 82.4% of residents who have gotten the shots," Berkeley Lovelace Jr. reports for CNBC. "In some states, the percentage of nursing home staff who are vaccinated is even lower." Without Medicaid or Medicare reimbursement, many would not be able to afford a nursing home. The nationwide median annual cost of a private room in a nursing home was $102,200 in 2019.

Some nursing homes have been reluctant to mandate vaccinations, fearing it would cause employees to quit when there are already widespread staffing shortages.