The Biden-Harris Administration will require COVID-19 vaccination of staff within all Medicare and Medicaid-certified facilities to protect both them and patients from the virus and its more contagious Delta variant.  Facilities across the country should make efforts now to get health care staff vaccinated to make sure they are in compliance when the rule takes effect.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), announced that emergency regulations requiring vaccinations for nursing home workers will be expanded to include hospitals, dialysis facilities, ambulatory surgical settings, and home health agencies, among others, as a condition for participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The decision was based on the continued and growing spread of the virus in health care settings, especially in parts of the U.S. with higher incidence of COVID-19.

“There is no higher priority for us than patient health and safety. As the Delta variant strengthens, the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to doing everything we can to keep patients, and those who care for them, safe,” said U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. “There is no question that staff, across any health care setting, who remain unvaccinated pose both direct and indirect threats to patient safety and population health. Ensuring safety and access to all patients, regardless of their entry point into the health care system, is essential.”

Nursing homes with an overall staff vaccination rate of 75% or lower experience higher rates of preventable COVID infection. In CMS’s review of available data, the agency is seeing lower staff vaccination rates among hospital and End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) facilities. To combat this issue, CMS is using its authority to establish vaccine requirements for all providers and suppliers that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Vaccinations have proven to reduce the risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 and are effective against the Delta variant.  CMS will continue to work closely with all Medicare and Medicaid certified facilities to ensure these new requirements are met.

“We know that those working in health care want to do what is best for their patients in order to keep them safe,” said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.  “As the Delta variant continues to spread, we know the best defense against it lies with the COVID-19 vaccine. Data show that the higher the level of vaccination rates among providers and staff, the lower the infection rate is among patients who are dependent upon them for care. Now is the time to act. I’m urging everyone, but especially those fighting this virus on the front lines, to get vaccinated and protect themselves, their families, and their patients from COVID-19.”

CMS is developing an Interim Final Rule with Comment Period that will be issued in October.  CMS expects certified Medicare and Medicaid facilities to act in the best interest of patients and staff by complying with new COVID-19 vaccination requirements.  Health care workers employed in these facilities who are not currently vaccinated are urged to begin the process immediately. Facilities are urged to use all available resources to support employee vaccinations, including employee education and clinics, as they work to meet new federal requirements.

Projects to Help Combat the COVID-19 Pandemic, Address Impacts of Climate Change and Advance Equity Will Receive Funding Priority

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development Justin Maxson today announced that USDA Rural Development will give funding priority for projects to address some of the top challenges in rural America.

This funding priority supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s mission to help the people of rural America build back better. USDA will notify stakeholders that a program is offering funding priority when the program’s application window opens and will continuously update the Priority Points Program Chart.

Rural Development will award priority points on funding applications for projects that will:

1. Help rural communities recover economically from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in disadvantaged communities.
2. Ensure all rural residents have equitable access to Rural Development programs and will benefit from projects Rural Development funds.
3. Reduce climate pollution and increase resiliency to the impacts of climate change by providing economic support to rural communities.

USDA is incorporating these key priorities into its work across the agency. The Department is working with our partners to encourage potential applicants to focus on strategic investments that complement these priorities.

For more information, visit www.rd.usda.gov/priority-points.

Application scoring criteria for the programs offering priority points will be included in funding announcements and published in the Federal Register when the application window opens.

If you’d like to subscribe to USDA Rural Development updates, visit our GovDelivery subscriber page.

The Technical Assistance and Services Center (TASC), in coordination with the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP), are pleased to provide an update of the COVID-19 Funding Sources Impacting Rural Providers guide. This funding resource is intended to support rural health care providers, along with their state and local partners, navigate the availability of federal funds to support the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic response and recovery efforts. This guide is updated regularly to capture changes in funding sources.

Seven tables, or matrices, are provided for quick reference at the beginning of this resource. The tables can be used to check eligibility of participation in funding sources by provider types: rural prospective payment system (PPS) and critical access hospitals (CAH), rural health clinics (RHC), federally qualified health centers (FQHC), long-term care (LTC) or skilled nursing facilities (SNF), tribal facilities, and emergency medical services (EMS). The tables also provide an at-a-glance view for each provider type sharing the different types of funds that may be accessed from various funding sources dependent on their participation eligibility. Each funding source is described in its own section of this resource with an executive summary followed by further detail on the use of funds, reporting requirements, hyperlinks to the legislation and detailed information. The majority of the updates are in sections on the RHC COVID-19 Testing and Mitigation Program and the HRSA Health Center Grants.

The guide can be found in COVID-19 Collection located on The National Rural Health Resource Center’s website. This collection consists of trusted and reliable resources, such as the COVID-19 Funding Sources Impacting Rural Providers Guide, along with standing links to additional organizations’ COVID-19 resources, FAQs, webinars, tools, and trainings. The Center aims to help direct the most up-to-date and relevant tools and resources to rural hospitals, clinics, and their communities. This Collection will be updated regularly to help assist with the abundance of circulating information relating to COVID-19.

To help states support families and communities and to continue to address health disparities, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is providing guidance to states about additional funding for states to promote the importance of COVID-19 vaccination for eligible individuals enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).  CMS’s new guidance also highlights Medicaid and CHIP coverage for diagnostic and screening COVID-19 testing in a variety of settings, including schools.

Information on the Provider Relief Fund program, which gives financial support to providers who have seen lost revenues and increased expenses during the COVID-19 pandemic, previously hosted on the HHS website is now available on the HRSA website.  Users who visit hhs.gov/providerrelief (previous URL) will be automatically re-directed to the new site. All archived content will remain available to the public. For updates about the PRF and other HRSA programs, please subscribe to the HRSA eNews.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) provides an overview of lessons learned from vaccine programs and gives several examples of federal and state programs that could serve as models for new strategies.

With a focus on protecting students and keeping them in classrooms, Pennsylvania Governor Wolf joined the Departments of Health, Human Services and Education to discuss the current state of COVID-19 and a new Secretary of Health order requiring masks to be worn inside K-12 school buildings, early learning programs and child care providers, which will take effect at 12:01 am on Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021. Universal masking in schools, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend, reduces the risk that entire classrooms will need to quarantine due to a positive COVID-19 case. For eligible adolescents in Pennsylvania, 18.2 percent of children ages 12-14 are fully vaccinated and 38.3 percent of children ages 15-19 are fully vaccinated. The order applies to everyone indoors at K-12 public schools including brick and mortar and cyber charter schools, private and parochial schools, career and technical centers (CTCs), and intermediate units (IUs). The order also applies to early learning programs and childcare providers for children ages 2 and older, as recommended by the CDC.

See the initial FAQs on the new order.

Workers are more likely to get vaccinated when their employers require them to, according to the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index.

• Respondents Whose Employer Require COVID-19 Vaccination: 80% said they were already vaccinated; 10% said they were likely to get a vaccine and 11% said they were either “not likely” or were a “hard pass” on the idea.
• Respondents Whose Employer Had No COVID-19 Vaccination Requirement: 68% said they’d already been vaccinated; another 6% were likely to get the vaccine, and 27% said they were either “not likely” or were a “hard pass” on vaccination.

Mandates will likely accelerate over the next several months, according to a new report by advisory firm Willis Towers Watson that found that 52% of the employers surveyed said they may impose a mandate, which would be a dramatic increase from the 21 percent who mandate vaccines now. Nearly a third of employers said they might make vaccination a requirement to gain access to the workplace, while about one in five are considering making vaccination a condition of employment.

Read more.