CMS Withdraws Health Care Worker COVID-19 Vaccination Requirement
- June 09, 2023
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) officially withdrew health care staff COVID-19 vaccination requirements In a final rule (88 Fed. Reg. 36485) published June 5 in the Federal Register.
The health care staff COVID-19 vaccine mandate was in place since November 2021, when CMS issued an interim final rule revising the health and safety requirements for most Medicare and Medicaid-participating providers. The interim final rule required most health care workers to complete their COVID–19 primary vaccine series.
Given declining infection and death rates, decreasing severity of disease, and the addition of COVID-19 vaccination measures to quality improvement and reporting programs, the health care staff vaccination mandate is no longer necessary, CMS said.
Although the final rule isn’t effective until August 4, CMS said it is no longer enforcing the staff vaccination provisions.
CMS is now aligning its approach with those for other infectious diseases, specifically influenza, and “intends to encourage ongoing COVID–19 vaccination through its quality reporting and value-based incentive programs,” the final rule said. “Quality measures would provide a means to monitor COVID–19 vaccination rates among patients and health care personnel in multiple entities across the health system, including inpatient, outpatient, congregate care, and home-based care settings.”
The final rule also makes permanent so-called “educate and offer” requirements for long term care (LTC) facilities and intermediate care facilities for individuals with intellectual disabilities (ICFs–IID), which CMS set forth in an interim final rule issued in May 2021. Under the interim final rule, LTC facilities and ICFs-IID must provide COVID-19 vaccination education and offer COVID-19 vaccines to residents and staff. The interim final rule also established additional infection control and reporting requirements for LTC facilities, which were finalized through previous rulemaking.
CMS said the educate and offer requirements for COVID-19 are consistent with the agency’s regulatory approach for other infectious diseases such as influenza and pneumococcal disease.
Lastly, the final rule removes from regulatory text now-expired requirements that LTC facilities test their staff and residents for COVID-19. The requirements were set forth in an interim final rule issued in September 2020 and applied through the duration of the COVID-19 public health emergency, which ended on May 11.
“CMS continues to emphasize the importance of practicing preventative measures in order to reduce the transmission of COVID–19. Moving forward, CMS aims to use quality reporting and value-based incentive programs to encourage health care facilities to practice preventative measures against COVID–19,” the final rule said.