Long-Term Care Facility Toolkit: Preparing for COVID-19 Vaccination at Your Facility
This toolkit provides long-term care facility (LTCF) administrators and clinical leadership with information and resources to help build vaccine confidence among healthcare personnel (HCP) and residents. You play a critical role in providing trusted information and ensuring high COVID-19 vaccination coverage in your facility.
Based on recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an independent panel of medical and public health experts, CDC recommends that HCP and LTCF residents be among those offered the first doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
- HCP include all paid and unpaid persons serving in healthcare settings who have the potential for direct or indirect exposure to patients or infectious materials. HCP were placed first in line to receive COVID-19 vaccine because of their essential role in fighting this deadly pandemic and their increased risk of getting COVID-19 and spreading it to residents. For the purposes of this toolkit, we will be referring to HCP as LTCF staff.
- Learn more about why it’s important that healthcare personnel get vaccinated.
- LTCF residents are defined as adults who live in facilities that provide a variety of services, including medical and personal care, to people who are unable to live independently. Making sure LTCF residents receive COVID-19 vaccination as soon as vaccine is available will help save the lives of those at highest risk for infection and severe illness from COVID-19. Because residents live in group settings and are often older adults with underlying chronic medical conditions, LTCF residents are most at risk of severe disease from infections like COVID-19.
Receiving a COVID-19 vaccine is an important step to prevent getting sick with COVID-19 disease. The decision to get vaccinated protects more than just an individual’s health. It can also help protect coworkers, residents, families, and communities. Vaccination is an important tool to help stop the pandemic. However, it remains critical that all staff and residents continue to follow current COVID-19 infection prevention and control guidance to protect themselves and others.
Additional information about vaccine distribution through this program can be found on the CDC COVID-19 Vaccination Data Tracker.
This toolkit outlines the importance of COVID-19 vaccination in LTCFs, provides strategies for encouraging COVID-19 vaccination, and includes tools a facility may use to monitor COVID-19 vaccination side effects among staff and residents. For the purposes of this toolkit, we will be referring to HCP as LTCF staff.
LTCF administrators and clinical leadership should track vaccination coverage in their facilities and adjust communication with residents and staff accordingly.
- Establish a process to record the COVID-19 vaccination status of each staff member, including contract, temporary, and unpaid workers, and resident throughout program rollout (use a spreadsheet or electronic tracking system).
- Talk to staff and residents/families to learn why they may be declining vaccination and tailor any educational messages accordingly.
- Review data periodically to identify unvaccinated staff and residents and follow up with them and/or their families as the vaccination program continues.
- Adjust vaccination promotion strategies to reach unvaccinated staff and residents based on feedback and uptake.
- Facilities eligible to report to the NHSN Long-Term Care Facility Component are encouraged to use the COVID-19 Vaccination module to track aggregate vaccination coverage in their facility. NHSN will allow facilities, state health departments, and CDC to determine the number and percentage of staff and residents in each facility who have received the COVID-19 vaccine.