The legal uncertainty over a federal requirement that the nation's 17 million health care workers be vaccined against the coronaviruses has led some well-known hospital chains to drop their own mandates.
The Cleveland Clinic, HCA healthcare and Intermountain healthcare are among the organizations that have stopped requiring employees to be vaccine free. The Wall Street Journal reported on the decisions of the hospitals.
Efforts to quell the latest surge in infections are likely to be slowed down by the moves. The latest wave of Covid cases threatens to overwhelm hospitals again, and public health officials are renewing their pleas for more people to get vaccinations and booster shots. Over 66,000 Americans are hospitalized with Covid.
If the courts uphold the federal government's mandate, hospitals will be hard-pressed to meet the early January deadline for vaccinating eligible staff. The case is likely to go to the Supreme Court, as federal officials appeal a Louisiana judge's decision to halt the rule. The justices have previously rejected challenges to other vaccine requirements, and the court on Monday allowed New York State's vaccine requirement for health care workers to continue.
It's not clear how many hospitals are abandoning the policy. Many states, like California and New York, and local governments, like Philadelphia, adopted their own rules. HCA specified that it would continue the requirement at hospitals where there is a state mandate.
Several large hospital groups imposed their own requirements earlier this year after seeing a rise in cases from the Delta variant. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, which issued the new rule, says many facilities have already succeeded in getting workers protected.
The decisions on enforcement have varied across the board, according to a labor and employment lawyer. She said that an equal number of her health care clients had stopped the requirement.
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The I.C.U. pharmacy at St. Peter's Health received a shot. Forty percent of the nation's hospitals mandated vaccinations for staff members, but some have now suspended their policies.
The American Hospital Association said in a statement that they don't think most hospitals are changing their mandates. The group said that hospitals and health systems are not delaying their efforts to vaccine staff.
The legal landscape is confusing with states and local governments often opposing federal efforts. The governor of Florida stopped vaccine mandates by private employers after the federal government issued a rule for health care workers.
It's not clear how many health care workers still need to bevaccinated. Overall immunization rates have climbed in the last few months, despite a study showing that 30 percent of hospital workers were not fully vaccined. HCA, which employs about 275,000 workers and operates in 20 states, said most of them were fully vaccine free. Neither AdventHealth nor UF Health Jacksonville would say how many of their employees were vaccine free. Hospitals don't have to publicly report their vaccination rates.
Many hospitals are still trying to convince workers. According to AdventHealth, Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective at reducing both the risk of becoming infectious and the level of harm in the case of a breakthrough infection.
The Federation of American Hospitals, which represents for-profit chains like HCA, said hospitals are committed to having their work force vaxed.
Concerns that workers will leave if they object to the vaccine is one of the reasons for the opposition to the requirements. Many hospital chains said there were not many departures. He said that small numbers can be a problem.
Some hospital companies said they would look at alternatives. The Cleveland Clinic said it was adding more measures, including periodic testing for those providing direct clinical care, after estimating that nearly 85 percent of its employees were fully vaccine free.
Ann Marie Pettis, the president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, said that hospitals that don't want to insist on immunizations are testing their employees. She said that it wasn't like they were just throwing up their hands and saying it was a free-for-all.
The hospitals have a lot of vaccine workers. Intermountain and other Utah hospitals said 98 percent of their staff were already vaccine free.
