Connie Christian, MBA, CPHRM

On November 4, 2021, the Biden-Harris Administration announced two major vaccination policies aimed at vaccinating healthcare workers:

• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a requirement for healthcare workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to be fully vaccinated.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a requirement for employers with more than 100 employees to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or routinely tested.[1]
  • However, physician practices with 100 or more employees are exempt from this OSHA ETS and are expected to follow the COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard for Healthcare Workers issued in June 2021.

The CMS Vaccination Rule

On November 5, 2021, CMS outlined their vaccine requirements in Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Omnibus COVID-19 Health Care Staff Vaccination Interim Final Rule (CMS Vaccination Rule). The CMS Vaccination Rule applies to Medicare and Medicaid-certified provider and supplier types, regulated under the Medicare health and safety standards known as Conditions of Participation and Condi­tions for Coverage or Requirements. Physician practices do not meet the requirements of this regulation; however, they will fall under one of the OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) requirements.

Facilities covered by the CMS Vaccination Rule must establish a policy ensuring that all eligible staff have received the first dose of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine or a one-dose COVID-19 vaccine prior to providing any care, treatment, or other services by December 5, 2021. All eligible staff must have received the necessary shots to be fully vaccinated by January 4, 2022.[2]

The OSHA Emergency Temporary Standards

On November 4, 2021, OSHA released its Vaccine and Testing ETS. It requires employers with 100 employees or more to ensure all employees are either fully vaccinated or produce a negative COVID-19 test result on at least a weekly basis before arriving at the workplace for duty.

For those facilities or physician practices that don’t fall under the CMS Vaccine Rule or the expectation by OSHA is that you will continue to follow the OSHA COVID-19 Healthcare ETS issued in June 2021. [3] The OSHA COVID-19 Healthcare ETS is still in effect and has not been challenged in the legal arena.

This article provides a brief summary of recent vaccine mandates for healthcare workers. To assist our members in unpacking the new CMS and OSHA requirements, we have created a whitepaper resource: Guidance on 2021 Federal COVID-19 CMS and OSHA Vaccine Mandates.