The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) announcement a new tool on the CMS comparison website to enable consumers to access the vaccination rates of staff and residents of each nursing facility and make informed decisions when choosing a nursing facility. CMS has asked certified healthcare facilities to report weekly COVID-19 vaccination data since May and can use that data to feed into the new transparency tool. As a result, the new transparency tool does not add new requirements to nursing facilities, although mandates to vaccinate nursing facility staff may be forthcoming under new emergency federal regulations.

Although vaccination rates are currently available on the CMS COVID-19 data from nursing homes website, the information is isolated from the COVID-19 data and is not user-friendly. Inclusion of vaccination rates on the Compare website will allow consumers to view vaccination data, as well as other data points, including information on fire safety, penalties, staffing levels, and more. , offering a more complete picture of the care establishment.

CMS’s reporting of immunization data to the CMS Compare website is another administration response to low immunization rates among nursing home workers. These efforts were previously discussed with new rules require nursing facilities to educate and offer COVID-19 vaccine to residents, clients and staff, and report weekly COVID-19 immunization data for residents and staff, and will soon be covered in more detail with a new condition of participation fully vaccinate workers. The collection and presentation of large national data sets, in a user-friendly format, is an ongoing federal effort to encourage quality-based competition in the healthcare industry.

This is also a measure taken by CMS to increase transparency of vaccination rates, as requested by US Senate.