TOPEKA – Gov. Laura Kelly announced Friday that the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services and Kansas Department for Health and Environment have collaborated to create an online dashboard that makes it easier for the public to track vaccination rates among healthcare personnel in the state’s long-term care facilities in anticipation of the federal regulation requiring staff vaccinations within the nation’s more than 15,000 Medicare and Medicaid-participating nursing homes, according to a media release from the governor's office.
The anticipated emergency federal requirement is being developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This new requirement is a key component of protecting the health and safety of nursing home residents and staff by ensuring that all nursing home staff receive COVID-19 vaccinations.
The state’s newly launched dashboard extrapolates data specific to Kansas from the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network COVID-19 Long Term Care Facility Module and provides a view of the healthcare personnel vaccination rates for Kansas’s federally licensed LTCFs.
“The importance of vaccinations for individuals who work with the older population so profoundly impacted by COVID-19 can’t be overstated as the decision to get vaccinated can not only protect their health, but the health of their colleagues, patients and their families, and the communities they serve,” KDADS Secretary Laura Howard said. “The dashboard provides Kansas an important local tool to share CMS vaccination data among healthcare workers in this setting with the public.”
The most recent healthcare personnel vaccination rate data available from CMS (updated Aug.26,) shows that in Kansas, 86.7 percent of current residents and 58.1 percent of current staff (healthcare personnel) have completed COVID-19 vaccinations per facility.
“We know that vaccinations are the most effective way to protect ourselves and others from COVID-19,” said Lee Norman, M.D., KDHE Secretary. “This dashboard helps to highlight CMS facilities in the state as they work to vaccinate their employees to protect the important population they serve.””
The Kansas dashboard, to be updated by KDHE Fridays by 12:30 p.m., includes both a map view and a table view. The map view of the dashboard categorizes federally licensed LTCFs into four categories based on healthcare personnel vaccination rates:
- Below 50%
- 50-70%
- 70-90%
- Above 90%
The table view provides a list of all federally licensed LTCFs and their healthcare personnel vaccination rates.
The state dashboard includes the most recent healthcare personnel vaccination rate data available from CMS. CMS publishes data reported by nursing homes to the CDC’s NHSN on a weekly basis; the data is typically published 11 days after being submitted. More information is available on the CMS website.