Senators call for transparency in nursing home staff vaccination reports

A pair of U.S. senators say the Biden administration must do more to provide families with easily accessible information on covid-19 vaccination rates among nursing home staff and residents.

Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Senate Finance chair, and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, D-Scranton, who chairs the Senate Committee on Aging, want the administration to act as covid-19 infections surge, fueled by the highly contagious delta variant.

While residents of the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes were among the first to avail themselves of the covid-19 vaccine, data available on the Pennsylvania Department of Health dashboard indicate employees at many facilities have been hesitant to follow suit.

As of Aug. 29, only 14.3% of the state’s nursing homes had met the 80% staff vaccine rate officials say they must meet by Oct. 1 or face losing state and federal funds.

Staff vaccination rates vary dramatically at nursing homes in Western Pennsylvania. Data gleaned from reports filed with the federal government show rates ranging from 90% at Redstone Highlands in Greensburg to 34.6% at Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness in Beaver, and down to 23.6% at Platinum Ridge Rehabilitation and Wellness in Brackenridge.

Faced with vaccine hesitancy among staff, local nursing home administrators fear state and federal mandates requiring employees to be vaccinated could exacerbate an already critical shortage of workers willing to take hands-on care jobs.

At Westmoreland Manor, the 408-bed, county-owned nursing home, 66% of some 400 employees were vaccinated as of Aug. 29. On one hand, officials fear they could lose employees who are hesitant to be vaccinated. On the other, there is concern the facility could lose millions of dollars in reimbursements if they fail to meet state and federal criteria for staff vaccination rates.

County Commissioner Gina Cerilli Thrasher said all nursing homes are facing a similar dilemma, while families worry about their loved ones’ possible exposure to the virus.

“I understand both sides,” Cerilli told the Trib when the new requirement was announced last month.

While skilled nursing care facilities are required to report resident and staff vaccine rates to the federal government weekly, the information on the federal CMS website is difficult to navigate.

“We believe more needs to be done to make these transparency measures useful to patients and their loved ones, particularly given the recent surge in covid-19 cases across the United States, and the wide variation in vaccination rates among nursing home residents and workers throughout our nation,” Casey and Wyden wrote in a letter to the White House, urging officials to make such information readily available for families on the CMS website.

Although Care Compare, the CMS website, is an official data repository, it also can easily be confused with unregulated online ratings systems that have little in the way of oversight.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health vaccine dashboard, which includes a spreadsheet of nursing home vaccine information, contains the same information as the CMS website and is easier to navigate.