March 30, 2022

The Massachusetts Senior Living Vaccine Survey Results Are In

As of March 1, 2022, MA DPH requires all eligible staff at nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and rest homes to be vaccinated and boosted.

We released a survey two weeks ago to see what impact this vaccination requirement has had on senior living facility staffing in Massachusetts.

Thank you to everyone who responded our survey.

SURVEY RESULTS

We received responses from 26 facilities across Massachusetts and the news was generally good.

Of the responses, 11 facilities (42.3%) did not have to terminate any employees or did not have any employees quit due to a refusal to receive a vaccine/booster.  Another 12 facilities (46.2%) had less than 5% of their staff leave employment.  It’s reasonable to conclude that these facilities (88.5%) saw minimal impact on their operations from this public health requirement.

However, for 11.5% of Massachusetts facilities, over 5% of their staff left employment.  For these facilities, the impact of this requirement was significant.

When asked if they are still employing unvaccinated staff, 88% of facilities (23) were not while 12% (3) were still employing such staff.

In response to the question of whether facilities are “fully aware of the tags, fines and admission freezes that you’ll face for failing to meet the vaccination and reporting requirements”, 92% of facilities (24) were fully aware while 8% (2) were not.

Fortunately, the 3 facilities that were employing unvaccinated employees were all aware of the potential sanctions while the 2 facilities that were not aware of the sanctions were not employing any unvaccinated staff.  This suggests a high level of industry awareness about this requirement and the consequences of not adhering to it.  In other words, facilities are making informed decisions about this issue and how it effects them.

If you need support implementing vaccination tracking and reporting processes & tools, Eisenstein Flaherty can help.  We have solutions, including clinical staff, operations experts, and an innovative software tool – EF Ally – to meet any facility’s needs.

Please give us a call at (617) 702-2644 or email us at Contact@EFSeniorCare.com.