On Monday, Glenn Lane came to a decision that made him a possible outlier in the home care industry. The founder and CEO of Mamaroneck, NY-based Westchester Family Care mandated COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of employment for all new workers.
“I really wanted to be in a position to increase the number of vaccinated folks more aggressively and recruiting seemed like a logical place to start,” Lane told McKnight’s Home Care Daily. “People have the option of joining me or not joining me based on this.”
It was a decision that didn’t come lightly for Lane whose company serves a handful of counties just north of New York City. In an interview last month, Lane said he was considering a vaccine mandate, but feared it would make it too difficult to recruit and retain workers as he expands his business. He estimates about 85% of his current staff have gotten COVID-19 shots so far.
But the Biden administration’s recent requirement that nursing homes mandate vaccinations for staff in order to receive federal funding for Medicare and Medicaid programs helped change the calculus for Lane.
“If there are mandates in other places that are competing with my workforce, we could get an influx of unvaccinated folks that are choosing not to continue to work in nursing homes and hospitals,” Lane explained.
Lane is not alone in his concerns over unvaccinated nursing home workers seeking jobs elsewhere. On Monday, LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith-Sloan sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chaquita Brooks-LaSure demanding the mandate be extended to all care settings.
“Many staff, temporary workers, residents, visitors and patients move between healthcare settings, so the only way to protect older Americans and their caregivers is to make vaccination mandates universal for all of health care,” Sloan said in the letter.
While an increasing number of employers, including healthcare providers, have been mandating shots for staff, the home care and home healthcare industries have been slow to jump on the bandwagon. On Monday, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization called for mandatory vaccinations of healthcare staff in all settings. But the National Association for Home Care and Hospice and the Home Care Association of America have been reluctant to urge members to mandate the vaccine.
Although Lane still isn’t requiring the estimated 15% of his staff who remain unvaccinated to get shots, he said he continues to educate them about the importance of getting the vaccine and offers incentives to do so. He hoped Food and Drug Administration approval of the Pfizer vaccine would prompt some to change their minds.
“I think having it fully approved will absolutely help,” Lane said. “I think there was a certain percentage that were waiting and will get it now. But I think there is a hard core, probably 10%, that I don’t know that we are going to get through to.”
