WA rural hospitals see some worker exodus from COVID vaccine mandate
Tentative estimates were offered Monday on how many hospital workers would be leaving their jobs after Monday’s vaccination mandate deadline, but a final tally is not yet clear.
During a news briefing hosted by the Washington State Hospital Association, Cassie Sauer, CEO of the Washington State Hospital Association, said estimates still ranged between 2 percent and 5 percent from the association’s initial survey of those hospital workers leaving their jobs after the Oct. 18 deadline.
“That actually may be, honestly a high estimate,” Sauer noted, as the association learned of more workers moving to get their vaccines and those already vaccinated not accounted for.
It is expected that rural hospitals, particularly in Eastern Washington, will be more affected than the rest of the state, according to examples given during the briefing,
Enforcement of the mandate was allowed to proceed Monday after a Thurston County Superior Court judge denied a request for temporary injunction.
In the University of Washington medical system, workers who had started their vaccines but are not fully vaccinated and past their two-week waiting period for full efficacy of the final dose were moved to administrative leave. That leave can be for up to 45 days to avoid firing/rehiring process, according to Dr. Tim Dellit, chief medical officer, UW Medicine.
Others facing denial of exemption also could take administrative leave to take action to come into compliance, he noted.
“After today, when you look at our staff, our medical staff and our trainees are at roughly 99 percent vaccinated,” Dellit said, “so we’re extremely happy with that number. At the same time, it means that we probably have about 220 staff who won’t be with us after today.
“What was interesting is that those who had their exemption request denied, the majority went on to start the vaccination series. And so overall we have seen this increase in vaccination rates through this mandate.”
Monday afternoon, Dr. Michael Anderson, chief medical officer for Virginia Mason Franciscan Health said in emailed statement that “Over 95 percent of our employees across our facilities have now met the vaccination requirement through full vaccination or an approved exemption.”
In a statement, MultiCare said that as of Monday, “98 percent of MultiCare employees are compliant with the governor’s order.”
Most of the hospital representatives on Monday’s call noted that a loss of workers had been taking place before the deadline. Those departures are not just because of the vaccine mandate. Some workers took early retirements, while others left to take traveling positions. In some cases, people quit to escape the workload, officials noted.
Reza Kaleel, chief executive for Kadlec Health System serving the Tri Cities area, said the system had lost “nearly a quarter of our ICU staff” for those mix of reasons. “But the pandemic, in one way shape or form, usually is part of that.”
“And everyone’s in the same situation with the hospitals virtually all competing with each other now across the country for a staff,” Kaleel added.
In other cases, the mandate did cause an exodus, particularly among support staff at rural hospitals.
“This last week, we lost almost our entire materials management department ... specifically to the mandate,” said Dr. Andrea Carter, chief medical officer for 50-bed Samaritan Healthcare in Moses Lake.
Materials management handles ordering supply, such as personal protective equipment, for staff.
Before that, Carter added, the hospital lost seven workers to the mandate.
“We rely fairly heavily on staffing agencies where we’re at. We don’t have a huge pool of staff, otherwise. And with the cost of those staffing agency contracts, that is hurting us a little bit,” Carter said.
“We will see curtailing of services, there’s no question about that,” Sauer said of rural hospitals, with caps on admissions and longer waits for elective procedures or those that aren’t urgent.
Statewide, COVID-19 cases in hospitals are declining but at a slow pace, Sauer noted, with 1,025 COVID positive patients in hospitals compared to 1,101 the same time last week.
The number of people on ventilators statewide remained relatively the same with 184 this week, compared with 185 last week, and an average of 10-15 COVID deaths a week.
This story was originally published October 18, 2021 at 1:41 PM.
