At the start of the month, President Joe Biden delivered a simple message to American healthcare workers: Get the Covid-19 vaccine or get out.
Biden ordered the sweeping federal vaccine requirement for 17million Americans employed at hospitals, home health agencies and other medical facilities that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs in an effort to curb the surging rate of coronavirus cases across the country.
The mandate won’t accept testing in place of vaccination, as other professions have allowed.
New York hospitals on Monday began firing or suspending healthcare workers for defying a similar state-level order from Governor Kathy Hochul, who has made vaccinations a top priority since taking office in August.
Hochul’s state of emergency declaration late Monday evening enables her to deploy the National Guard to fill staffing shortages in nursing homes and hospitals.
‘I’m using the full power of the state of New York to ensure that we do everything to protect people,’ she said on Monday. ‘This is simple, common sense.’
As New York copes with enforcing the coronavirus vaccine mandate, approximately 58,500 out of 450,000, or 87%, of health care workers were still unvaccinated as of Wednesday, according to state data.
In New York City’s 11 public acute-care hospitals, about 5,000 employees out of 43,000 were not vaccinated as of Monday, according to Mitchell Katz, head of NYC Health + Hospitals.
At New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, more than 99% of staff have been vaccinated, its director of media relations Alexandra Langan told Metro.co.uk.
The fewer than 250 out of 48,000 staffers who chose not to comply with the federal mandate are no longer employed at the hospital, she said.
Despite seeing the percentage of vaccinated health care workers in the state climb close to 90% during the week, providers outside the New York City metropolitan area still worry what impact the mandate will have on their staffing.
At the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, New York, about 7% of staff have been placed on unpaid leave this week. A majority of those affected were staff in the hospitals long-term care facility.
Anticipating staffing changes, the hospital suspended elective impatient surgeries last week, WKBU reported.
Officials at Oneida Health worry that the quality of care they provide will diminish with staffing shortages as the ‘current environment in upstate New York is a very challenging one’.
President and CEO Gene Morreale said in a statement last Wednesday that the facility already had an employee vacancy rate above 10% before 12% of the staff decided to forego their Covid-19 vaccination.
‘Even though we will do all that is humanly possible to continue to meet your healthcare needs locally, there will be an impact on our ability to provide care as we are able to today,’ Morreale said.
About an hour north of Oneida at Lewis County General Hospital, babies will no longer be delivered after six people in the maternity department quit over the vaccine mandate, NPR reported.
No deadline for healthcare workers to be vaccinated has been set at a federal level yet, but some private hospitals across the US have implemented mandates of their own.
One North Carolina-based hospital system fired about 175 workers in one of the largest mass terminations for failing to comply with the vaccine mandate as state hospitals remain inundated with Covid cases, the Daily Mail reported.
Novant Health, which employs more than 35,000 employees in 15 hospitals and 800 clinics, mandated that its employees get vaccinated in late July. Staff had until September 15 to comply.
Last week, about 375 employees were suspended for not being vaccinated, but 200 received their first dose before Monday’s deadline, spokesperson Megan Rivers said.
‘Less than 1% opted not to comply. We’re proud of the 35,000+ team members who chose to participate in the vaccine mandate program with patient safety at forefront,’ Rivers tweeted.
Rivers didn’t say how many workers were granted exemptions, but Novant Health acknowledged that some were and required them to undergo weekly coronavirus testing.
Hundreds of unvaccinated Yale New Haven Health employees may also face termination if they are not vaccinated by October 1, NBC Connecticut reported.
The hospital could end up parting with about 400 of 30,000 employees, although more people seem to be getting the jab as the deadline approaches, according to Dr Thomas Balcezack, Yale New Haven Health’s chief clinical officer.
Biden’s coronavirus plan is also causing major distress for health officials in more rural areas.
In rural areas where vaccination rates are low and hiring qualified staff has already proven difficult, health officials worry they may need to turn patients away if many staff leave.
‘Right off the bat, vaccines are safe and effective and it’s imperative that all rural health care workforce providers and staff need to be vaccinated,’ said National Rural Health Association CEO Alan Morgan in a September newsletter.
‘But we also know that there are higher rates of hospital workers that are unvaccinated and have no intention of getting vaccinated in the rural context … this is a significant concern.’
While many providers pay the price for vaccine mandates with staff resignations and suspensions, some have had to go as far as shut down whole services.
Something rural hospitals have trouble competing with are pay rates and sign-on bonuses, according to CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals, John Henderson.
‘Ultimately, they need to be ready to act and comply with whatever the standard becomes but we’ve got quite a few rules to be published and court challenges that will play out between now and then,’ he told KENS5.
At Houston Methodist in Texas, which was the first hospital known to mandate vaccinations for employees, more than 150 employees were fired or forced to resign if they did not get vaccinated, The Hill reported.
It remains to be seen how severe staffing shortages will be in New York and elsewhere, as additional mandates continue to be announced by state governments.
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