Lawmakers: Require nursing homes to disclose vaccine data

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nursing homes have to publicly disclose their vaccination rates for flu and pneumonia but there's no similar mandate for COVID-19 shots, even though the steepest toll from the virus has been among residents of long-term care facilities.

Now lawmakers of both parties are urging the Biden administration to require disclosure of coronavirus vaccination rates for residents and staff, and to make it easy for family members, advocacy groups and researchers to access such potentially critical details.

"The continued absence of publicly available COVID-19 vaccination information at the facility level leaves residents, workers, and their families in the dark, makes it impossible to fully evaluate the effect of these vaccines, and hinders efforts to ensure equitable vaccine access for communities of color," Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mike Crapo, RIdaho, write in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

The request comes as consumer advocates say it remains exceedingly difficult for family members to get coronavirus information from Medicare on individual nursing homes, either through the program's COVID-19 Nursing Home Data website, or its regular Care Compare site.

"It continues to be so problematic," said Sam Brooks, project manager for Consumer Voice, a national advocacy group for improving quality in long-term care. "It's just daunting."

Brooks said he was using Medicare's nursing home COVID19 site recently, put in a facility's name, and a popular chain restaurant came up. A joint search Wednesday with a reporter turned up an animal hospital, after entering the name of a nursing home and the community it was located in.

Nursing homes have been required since last May to regularly report cases and deaths among residents and staff to the government.