Editor’s note: Judge Terry A. Doughty, of U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, issued a preliminary injunction late Tuesday night to halt the start of President Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandate for health care workers, which was set to begin next week.
Health care workers across the county and country could be faced with a choice: get vaccinated or get fired.
All health care workers who work at a facility that receives Medicare and Medicaid funding must get the COVID-19 vaccine or they may lose their job in the coming weeks, depending on the health system’s interpretation of a federal mandate.
Though the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule requiring all employers with 100 or more workers to require all employees to be vaccinated had already been halted due to a stay in federal court, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ mandate impacting health care workers was still on in 40 states, including Indiana, on Tuesday afternoon.
A federal judge on Monday blocked the mandate on thousands of health care workers in 10 states that had brought the first legal challenge against the requirement. The court order said the agencies have no clear authority from Congress to enact the vaccine mandate for providers participating in Medicare and Medicaid.
Indiana is involved in a different lawsuit brought by Attorney General Todd Rokita and his counterparts in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. Unless a similar stay is approved for that lawsuit, thousands of health care jobs in Indiana and hundreds in Johnson County could be on the line. The federal mandate applies to more than 17 million workers nationwide in about 76,000 health care facilities and home health care providers that receive funding from government health programs.
Some health systems serving Johnson County already have a vaccine mandate, including Community Health Network. Community employees were required to get vaccinated by Sept. 15, and most complied. In fact, 99.6% of caregivers are in compliance with Community’s vaccine mandate, either by vaccination or by an exemption, according to a statement from Community.
Johnson Memorial Health and Franciscan Health are taking different approaches to enforce the mandate, but both are planning to comply.
Employees at the Franklin hospital must have their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by Monday, said Dr. David Dunkle, the hospital’s president and CEO. Anyone who does not have their first vaccine by the start of their shift on Monday will be suspended without pay, he said.
Hospital officials don’t have a count yet of how many are vaccinated but believe it be more than 70%. The exact number is unavailable due to the recent hacking of the hospital’s computer network, as employee vaccine records are among the documents that are still unreachable despite progress made to restore systems, Dunkle said.
Hospital officials are working to gather that data and expect to have a more clear picture of how many may be suspended without pay later this week. In the meantime, they are raising awareness about the federal mandate and offering an employee vaccine clinic to get as many people vaccinated as possible, he said.
Newly vaccinated employees who are receiving a Moderna or Pfizer vaccine will have to follow through and get the second shot in the two-dose series by Jan. 4.
Franciscan Health officials plan to let employees continue working until Jan. 4, according to a statement from the health care system. After Jan. 4, all employees must be fully vaccinated to continue working, and all new employees must provide proof of vaccination, the statement says.
Franciscan also does not have a count of vaccinated and unvaccinated employees available, and will continue to compile data on that over the next month, said Joe Stuteville, spokesperson for the hospital.
Both hospitals are offering exemptions for medical conditions or religion. Those who receive an exemption will have to be tested regularly.
The federal mandate is tough to accept because many of the employees the hospital may have to fire are not involved in patient care. The mandate applies to everyone who works in person at a health care facility, including custodial staff, food service workers and office workers. The only people who work for Johnson Memorial who are exempted from the mandate are a few medical bill coding employees who work remotely, Dunkle said.
At a time when hospitals across the county and country are experiencing staffing shortages, it is especially tough to consider firing any employee. The federal government is burdening hospital administrators with enforcement of the mandate, but not offering help to tackle the other issues hospitals are struggling with, such as recruiting nurses, he said.
“All of these decisions get made and there is no thought of how it impacts people in the Heartland of America,” Dunkle said.
The multi-layer approach to vaccine mandates has also made it confusing for some employees and easy for others to avoid the vaccine by leaving for another job, he said. For example, office workers could leave to do virtually the same job at a company that doesn’t have to mandate vaccines.
The mandate is also tough for Dunkle because he respects personal choice, he said.
“I feel like my hands are tied. I’m vaccinated. My whole family is vaccinated. But I believe in personal choice,” Dunkle said. “I believe our PAPR (hoods) and other mitigation measures can keep people safe in the workplace. … We had to do this before the vaccine and we were able to keep people healthy while they are at work.”
It is still too early to say how many employees will be let go from area hospitals. Hospitals officials are not counting out anyone yet. There is still time to get the first dose before the deadline.
“It is too early in the week for me to predict what staffing is going to look like on Monday,” Dunkle said. “I’m encouraged because more people are getting vaccinated every day.”
Franciscan Health officials are also struggling with the idea of letting people go.
“Like most hospital systems in this area and around the nation, Franciscan Health has been experiencing staff shortages in various nursing units, other clinical specialties and certain non-clinical support areas. This has been a constant challenge, certainly compounded by the long pandemic and the number of nurses who are reaching retirement age,” the statement from the health network said.
Trafalgar-based Windrose Health, which operates several clinics in Johnson, Marion and Bartholomew counties, is in good shape. All but 10 of the health care system’s 170 employees are vaccinated, said Scott Rollett, president and CEO.
Of those, five employees have resigned and the remaining employees have received exemptions or medical deferrals. Most of those who chose to leave are office employees, and only one person involved in patient care chose to resign, Rollett said.
“As all health care organizations are experiencing right now, it’s very challenging to fill some of the open positions. However, we are doing the best that we can and our staff will pull together as they always do to ensure that our patients are well-taken care of until we can get those positions filled. We regret that any of our staff have chosen to leave, but we do respect their decisions to do so,” he said in an email. “Overall, we feel blessed with 94% of our staff voluntarily choosing to get vaccinated for the safety of our patients and fellow teammates.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
