Nursing homes shed another 1,500 jobs in the month of July, bringing the total for residential care facilities to approximately 380,000 since February 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to the latest jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The state of Oregon is sending long-term care facilities staffing help as they respond to a surge in COVID-19 cases caused by the delta variant.
Providers who fail to quickly comply with a forthcoming federal staff vaccine mandate likely won’t be stripped immediately of their Medicare and Medicaid program eligibility, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services officials said Wednesday.
A Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 booster could be made available to long-term care residents and healthcare providers, as well as the rest of the American public, after the company unveiled promising results Wednesday about its effectiveness.
Despite nursing home residents accounting for just 2% of the Medicare population, the group is disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 when compared to community beneficiaries, according to preliminary findings released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Tuesday.
Fully vaccinated frontline healthcare workers were significantly better protected from contracting COVID-19 before the delta variant emerged as the dominant strain, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
New Jersey health officials are “very concerned” after active COVID-19 outbreaks at nursing homes throughout the state exceeded 100 this week.
Long-term care providers are hopeful that the Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine will help increase vaccine confidence among its workers and ultimately lead to hesitant staffers being more willing to get the two-dose regimen.
Federal officials might pursue a regional approach or offer exemptions in finalizing a nursing home staff vaccination mandate, but it’s important they not water down the regulations so much as to undermine their goal, health policy expert David Grabowski, Ph.D., said Monday afternoon.
Singling out the long-term care industry with the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate could cause a “mass exodus” of workers from the profession and to other healthcare settings, the American Health Care Association cautioned Friday.
