January 4, 2024 Washington, DC — Following a meeting yesterday with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and leaders of nursing home sector associations, Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge, the association of nonprofit providers of aging services, emphasized nonprofit, mission-driven providers’ commitment to increasing vaccination rates among nursing home residents. A statement is below:
“LeadingAge’s nonprofit, mission-driven members continue their work keeping older adults protected from the worst impacts of COVID. Vaccinations are among the most effective tools to prevent older adults’ suffering a serious illness due to the coronavirus, and we share the Secretary’s urgency around increasing nursing home residents’ vaccination rates.
That is why our members continue the necessary work of offering vaccines and educating nursing home residents and their families on the benefits of vaccination. As we told Secretary Becerra in December 2023, LeadingAge’s nursing home members already have vaccination rates more than 10 percentage points higher than the national average. They continue to work to get more residents vaccinated.
Lifting up and learning from high performing nursing homes by sharing their best practices for driving uptake, as we discussed in yesterday’s meeting, will help the entire sector improve. We look forward to elevating our members’ good work and lessons learned from their active engagement on this important public health matter.
We also stressed to the Secretary that it is imperative that HHS do their part. Success in increasing vaccination rates requires action from federal leaders, and we were glad that the Secretary reiterated that his department would continue to work on this issue. Specifically, we urged HHS to help ease logistical issues that are barriers to uptake—by enabling single-dose vaccine orders for nursing homes and making policy improvements that allow pharmacies to bill Medicare Part B for vaccinating residents during a Part A stay; to working with hospitals to encourage them to offer vaccines on discharge; and by communicating directly with residents themselves and their family members.
It’s also vital the HHS recognize and acknowledge that nursing homes are part of the larger community. When vaccination uptake rates are woefully low among the general public, it’s critical that public health officials educate the public more broadly—to the benefit of the entire nursing home sector and their surrounding communities.“
RESOURCE: Readout of HHS Secretary Becerra’s Meeting with Long-Term Care Facility Leaders, Jan. 3, 2024
