Some Hospitals, Health Systems Go Back on Vaccine Mandates

Major hospitals and health systems that previously implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates have lifted requirements their staff get the jabs in order to work. Some of the organizations include HCA Healthcare Inc., Tenet Healthcare Corp., AdventHealth, and the Cleveland Clinic.

The major hospitals and health systems have decided to drop the vaccine mandates to ease labor shortages, The Wall Street Journal reports. But the decisions also come shortly after several federal judges temporarily halted enforcement of a national vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. The mandate would have required healthcare workers in certified Medicare/Medicaid facilities to have at least one shot by Dec. 4, 2021, and by fully vaccinated by Jan. 4, 2022.

“Because recent federal court decisions have resulted in the CMS mandate being put on hold indefinitely, we have paused our vaccine requirement, except in states that have mandated vaccination,” an HCA Healthcare spokesperson has said in a statement emailed to news sources.

Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals provided similar reasons for halting enforcement of their COVID-19 vaccine mandates, citing the court’s injunction on the federal mandate. Local news sources report that organizations like Cleveland Clinic are instead opting for period testing of unvaccinated employees to keep patients, their workforce, and the community safe from exposure. Notably, Cleveland Clinic has reported that the majority of their workforce is already vaccinated.

Hospital executives, public health authorities, and nursing groups, however, have also said COVID-19 vaccine mandates as a “factor constraining the supply of healthcare workers,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

COVID-19 strained the healthcare workforce as hospitals reached capacity at the beginning of the pandemic and periodically over the last year and a half. Many organizations had to call on staffing agencies and travelling nurses to fill gaps in their workforce.

But as the pandemic’s effects die down, healthcare has noticed that labor shortages are not necessarily getting better. In fact, new data shows that healthcare may be one of the industry’s being hit the hardest by the “Great Resignation,” a phenomenon in which employers see high turnover as a direct result of the stress and economic troubles brought on by the pandemic.

These labor shortages have driven up hospital expenses, too. Healthcare consulting firm Kaufman Hall reported earlier this month that hospital labor costs increased by 2.7 percent from September to October this year. But the costs are also up by 12.6 percent compared to the same time last year and 14.8 percent compared to October 2019.

Hospitals and other provider organizations previously cited labor shortages and expenses as the reason why they chose not to mandate COVID-19 vaccination among their workers. As positive COVID-19 surged because of the Delta variant, executives feared that there would not be enough clinical staff to manage higher case volumes if they required vaccination.

“We have the potential to lose some caregivers to other systems,” Joey Austin, a spokeswoman for Mosaic Life Care in Missouri, said over the summer.

Notably, over 150 employees at Houston Methodist resigned or were fired after the Texas-based health system become one of the first healthcare organizations to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations earlier this year. More recently, 125 employees resigned from Indiana University Health after refusing to get the vaccine, the Kokomo Tribune reported.

Now, many organizations that chose to move forward with vaccine mandates are going back on the requirement for similar reasons.