Roy Exum
It is no secret that most Americans despise government mandates, especially when it is affecting the health care industry so badly. It is also obvious the new surge of COVID is stretching the nation’s hospitals and their staffs to the limit so this is hardly the time for The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to just announce it will start enforcing the vaccine mandates at hospitals in states where the mandate hasn’t been judicially enjoined.
According to Becker’s Hospital Review, 16 states are experiencing critical staffing shortages in at least 25 percent of their hospitals.
Next week, with the New Year arriving, there will be 25 states with critical staffing shortages and Tennessee is seventh in the country with 35.83 percent of our state’s hospitals gasping for breath. Add the fact Tennessee and 24 other states are not judicially enjoined from the mandate and failure to abide the idiotic order by Jan. 27 will put a facility at risk of losing its life blood – Medicare and Medicaid funding.
In New York more than 30,000 health providers have been terminated for not taking the vaccine and I’m betting each will be missed, this despite the assurance that President Biden is sending 1,000 military doctors and nurses to help staff hospitals. Are you kidding me? We have already had over 800,000 people die of COVID in the United States and, if you cannot treat the disease victims, the prognosis is rather dim.
"FEMA is deploying hundreds of ambulances and EMS crews to transport patients,” the President told the nation’s governors this week. “We’ve already deployed emergency response teams in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New Mexico. We’re ready to provide more hospital beds as well.”
A story in the Epoch Times yesterday stated CMS modified the compliance dates for the vaccine mandates. Facilities that receive Medicaid or Medicare funding must comply with the mandate’s first phase, meaning that all health care staff has to have received the first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Jan. 27, 2022 - or 30 days after the CMS memorandum was issued.
Those facilities will have to comply with the CMS mandate’s second phase, meaning health care workers need to receive the second dose by Feb. 28, 2022, according to the memo.
Earlier this month, a CMS spokesperson told The Epoch Times that it suspended enforcement of the vaccine mandate for health care workers “pending future developments in litigation.” It came after several courts issued injunctions against the rule.
But now, according to its latest directive, a health care facility will have to show that “policies and procedures are developed and implemented for ensuring all facility staff” under the agency’s mandate, “regardless of clinical responsibility or patient or resident contact are vaccinated for COVID-19,” the memo stipulates.
The facility also must show that “100 percent of staff have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, or have a pending request for, or have been granted a qualifying exemption, or identified as having a temporary delay as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” CMS’s directive says.
If fewer than 100 percent of staff are not compliant with the mandate, “the facility is non-compliant under the rule,” according to CMS. “The facility will receive notice of their non-compliance with the 100 percent standard. A facility that is above 80 percent and has a plan to achieve a 100 percent staff vaccination rate within 60 days would not be subject to additional enforcement action.”
Under the mandate, a facility that isn’t in compliance with the rule will be at risk of losing its federal Medicare or Medicaid funding.
The CMS vaccine mandate will now affect the following states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, the guidance doesn’t currently apply in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming, according to CMS.
In states where the vaccine mandate can’t be enforced due to judicial proceedings, CMS surveyors “should not undertake any efforts” to bring facilities under compliance, the memo says.
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