The past several months have seen thousands of hospitals announce COVID-19 vaccination requirements for staff and clinicians as a condition of employment.
Although controversial, the policies picked up steam when Pfizer and BioNTech’s Comirnaty received a full regulatory approval and then really kicked into gear when the Biden administration made workforce vaccination a requirement for Medicare and Medicaid participation.
Most health system leaders and professional organizations have been supportive of the requirement, with some describing vaccination as “the logical fulfillment of the ethical commitment of all healthcare workers to put patients as well as residents of long-term care facilities first.”
However, some executives and industry figures have warned that mandates might place provider organizations in a bind as disgruntled employees choose to walk away rather than comply.
“As a practical matter, this policy may result in exacerbating the severe workforce shortage problems that currently exist,” American Hospital Association President and CEO Rick Pollack said in a Sept. 9 statement.
Arkansas’ Community Hospital Executive Director James Magee said Sept. 22 that his 25-bed rural facility would not require COVID-19 vaccinations. He stressed that staffing issues and the fear of losing too many nurses were major factors in the decision.
“Mandating that really works a hard step on the smaller hospitals because we don’t have an extra pool of nurses to draw from out there,” he told local news group KAIT.
Some industry figures have pushed back on staffing fears. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and a former White House health policy adviser, pointed to the limited workforce fallout among the summer’s early movers as an acceptable loss for workforce-wide coverage.
“If you look at healthcare systems that have actually mandated this, they’ve retained over 99% of their workforce,” he said in support of the mandates during an August press event. “Their workforce does go along when the employer requires it.”
As some provider organizations reach their first deadlines for partial or full vaccination, more reports are trickling out on just how many employees hospitals and health systems are losing to vaccine mandates.
Fierce Healthcare will update this list as more deadlines are reached and hospitals share their numbers.
Houston Methodist, the first to announce a vaccine mandate, said it had 153 resignations or terminations among its roughly 26,000-person workforce.
Indiana University Health had 125 of its 35,800 employees resign from their jobs due to the vaccine requirement. A spokesperson told Fierce Healthcare on Sept. 23 that many were part-time workers and that the departures were the equivalent of 61 full-time employees. .
Lewis County Health System said it has seen 30 resignations as of Sept. 11 in the wake of announcing its vaccine mandate and as a result has been forced to pause maternal health services. At that time, 165 of the provider’s unvaccinated staff had not yet indicated whether they would comply or leave the single-hospital system. Lewis County Health System employs about 650 people and will see its mandate go into effect Sept. 27.
MaineHealth representative Caroline Cornish told Fierce Healthcare that 58 out of its team of 23,000 had resigned and cited the vaccination requirement among their reasons, as of Sept. 24.
Med Center Health said it had fired 180 employees from its workforce of roughly 3,800 who had not been vaccinated by Sept. 1. It also highlighted the hiring of 178 vaccinated employees who would begin within a week of the firings.
Medical University of South Carolina Health fired five employees who had not met its June 30 vaccination or exemption deadline. It employs more than 17,000 people.
Northern Light Health representative Karen Cashman told Fierce Healthcare that, as of Sept. 24, 89 employees had left the system due to its COVID-19 vaccine mandate. As of a Sept. 15 news conference, 91% of the system’s more than 12,000 employees had been vaccinated.
Novant Health said Sept. 21 that it has suspended about 375 of its more than 35,000 employees due to vaccination noncompliance. They have five more days to become compliant or face termination.
Olean General Hospital said it had seen 11 resignations ahead of New York’s Sept. 27 deadline for a first dose. As of Sept. 14, more than 250 of its 840 employees had not been vaccinated.
RWJBarnabas Health announced back in July that it had fired six employees at the supervisor level who had not complied with a requirement for upper staff to be vaccinated by June 30. The remaining 2,979 supervisors were vaccinated or received exemptions.
St. Claire Regional Medical Center said it had fired 23 staff who had refused vaccination. A spokesperson reportedly said these employees were a combination of full-time, part-time and pro re nata employees and represented “less than 1%" of its total workforce.
Tidelands Health had just a single employee out of 2,010 who did not comply with its mandate and chose to resign.
UNC Health has already seen 60 of its roughly 30,000 workers resign over a COVID-19 vaccination mandate originally scheduled for Sept. 21 but now delayed to Nov. 2. More than 1,000 who are still unvaccinated are on probation until the new cutoff.
Valley Health has terminated 72 workers who were unvaccinated by its Sept. 21 final deadline. It employs 6,300 staff.
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September 24, 2021 at 03:40AM
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How many employees have hospitals lost to vaccine mandates? Here are the numbers so far - FierceHealthcare
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