Associations representing nursing-home operators reacted cautiously to President Joe Biden's Aug. 18 order that their staffs be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds.

LeadingAge and the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living said they support the goal of increased vaccinations but said the order should apply to the entire health care sector.

AHCA/NCAL said vaccine-hesitant workers might move to other health fields as a result of the order.

"Vaccination mandates for health care personnel should be applied to all health care settings," AHCA/NCAL CEO Mark Parkinson said in a statement. "Without this, nursing homes face a disastrous workforce challenge.

"Focusing only on nursing homes will cause vaccine-hesitant workers to flee to other health care providers and leave many centers without adequate staff to care for residents. It will make an already difficult workforce shortage even worse. The net effect of this action will be the opposite of its intent and will affect the ability to provide quality care to our residents. We look forward to working with the administration in the coming days to develop solutions to overcome this challenge," Parkinson said.

The Department of Health and Human Services is to begin drafting regulations to implement the requirement, per Biden's order.

Katie Smith Sloan, CEO of LeadingAge, said nursing homes can't meet resident needs without federal funding.

"To penalize nursing homes by withholding or withdrawing funding is not the right way to increase vaccination rates," she said. "Without Medicaid and Medicare funding, nursing homes cannot provide the quality care that our nation's most vulnerable older adults need.

"Our mission-driven nursing home members, who operate on narrow margins in the best of times, depend on those funds alone to care for their residents. They cannot bear additional financial losses after more than a year of shouldering historic COVID-related costs.

"The administration is right; we are on wartime footing. Defunding the care providers who continue to fight on the frontlines would be a tragic misstep," she said.

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