Individual nursing homes’ COVID-19 vaccination rates are more subject to public comparisons thanks to a tool that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services unveiled this afternoon. The goal is to make previously available information more accessible to consumers, officials said.
The new online functionality is now live on CMS’s Care Compare site through Medicare.gov. It figures to increase pressure on facilities with lower staff or resident vaccination rates.
Nationwide, the median nursing home staff vaccination rate has hovered around 64%, according to recent federal statistics. About 84% of residents are vaccinated.
The new features allow users to search for nursing homes in a given area. Results for specific facilities now display their COVID-19 vaccination rates among residents and staff, and compare the data to state and national averages.
The reported data will be updated on a bi-weekly basis, according to CMS.
Users also can select multiple nursing homes in their search; the facility information can be displayed side-by-side to allow users to compare the data amongst providers.
Agency officials explained that the portal makes statistics more “user friendly” for anyone trying to choose a nursing home. Higher vaccination rates are widely considered more desirable, especially for frail older adults.
“This is the latest in a series of actions that we have taken to increase vaccination rates. We continue to strongly encourage nursing homes to use every resource that they have to increase their staff vaccination rates and also continue to get residents vaccinated,” agency staff said Tuesday while demonstrating the site features.
The announcement comes after CMS faced public pressure from lawmakers to make COVID-19 vaccination rates more accessible for the public. Democratic Senate leaders Bob Casey (PA) and Ron Wyden (OR) specifically called on the agency to put facility vaccination data on its Care Compare website to make it easier to find for consumers.
“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,” Sens. Bob Casey (PA) and Ron Wyden (OR) wrote in a letter Sept. 10 to CMS Administration Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.
Until now, the site-level data has been available only in a relatively obscured, difficult to maneuver format on the COVID-19 Nursing Home Data site and in a separate Centers for Disease Control and Prevention web location.
Agency staff said confusion ”plus other feedback” went into CMS’ decision to refine the way information is posted and available.
“With our research and with what we’ve done in reaching out to consumers and getting their input, we feel that this is a great step forward to making this valuable information easily accessible,” a CMS representative said.
“As we continue to work with our partners to monitor the spread of COVID-19 and keep nursing home residents safe, we want to give people a new tool to visualize this data to help them make informed decisions,” CMS Administration Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a statement Tuesday.
“CMS knows that nursing home staff want to protect their residents and is calling on them to get vaccinated now,” she added.
