In a move to increase COVID-19 vaccinations among home-based care workers, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) has teamed up with the National Minority Health Association (NMHA) and the Flex for Checks program.
“We don’t see this as a small issue to be addressed,” NAHC President Bill Dombi told Home Health Care News. “We still see it as a continuing and large issue. If staff vaccination rates at any company are below 50%, the risk factors are exponentially increased.”
Among home-based care workers, the estimated vaccination range is between 40% to 90%, depending on the company and the discipline of the caregiver, according to NAHC.
The partnership comes at a time when the Delta variant, a more infectious strain of coronavirus, continues to spread across the U.S.
In order to fund its vaccination efforts, NMHA has received a significant grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The HRSA grant is part of the $125 million available through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) American Rescue Plan.
Flex for Checks is a community-based program that was developed as part of an $11.1 million grant from HRSA. The goal of the program is to increase vaccination confidence and rates in underserved communities.
Dallas-based post-acute care provider AccentCare has also aligned with NAHC and NMHA. AccentCare has agreed to join in the initiative by introducing Flex for Checks to its employees. The company’s goal is to reach 5,000 shots by an unspecified date.
“We recognize that the industry has a problem when it comes to vaccinations,” Stephan Rodgers, CEO of AccentCare, said in a press release. “Vaccination is the first line of defense against COVID-19. [We] want to be part of the solution, and that’s why we are aggressively encouraging our team members to get vaccinated.”
Dombi noted that having a company of AccentCare’s stature join in its efforts adds instant credibility to the initiative. He hopes similar companies follow suit.
“It’s a voice of an employer of these workers,” he said. “It’s basically sending a message to the rest of the home care community that a large employer with thousands upon thousands of workers feels value exists in this project.”
While NAHC has been vocal about the importance of home-based care workers getting vaccinated, the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization has shied away from pushing all individual providers to implement vaccine mandates for their staff.
In July, almost 60 medical groups and senior services associations joined forces to push for mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for all health and long-term care workers. NAHC was not part of this effort.
“We fully support vaccination for COVID,” Dombi said. “The concern we have about the effort we did not join was that it was focused on encouraging employers to mandate vaccination. That would create the problem of ‘some but not all’ employers mandating vaccination.”
In other words, this opens the door for staff to leave companies that have implemented a vaccine mandate for ones that haven’t.
“It creates the risk of disrupting the delivery of care to patients, because we’re facing staff shortages already,” Dombi continued. “I don’t want this to be taken as [NAHC] not supporting across-the-board vaccinations among staff.”
Moving forward, Dombi stressed that teaming up with NMHA is just one of the ways NAHC plans to help improve vaccination rates among home-based care workers. The organization has plans to take multiple approaches when it comes to this issue.
“We think it makes sense to get behind this because pretty much everything may help in trying to deal with the hesitancies, or the misunderstandings, or just the need for information about the efficacy of the vaccine,” he said. “We’re looking to work on this issue in any form or fashion that seems reasonable, as a way of increasing the rate of vaccinations in home care.”
Companies featured in this article:
The National Association for Home Care & Hospice, The National Minority Health Association
