Posted on 12/13/2021 8:50:50 PM PST by SeekAndFind
On Sunday we noted that hospitals in four states have called in the National Guard to help alleviate a severe healthcare worker shortage caused by mass firings of those who refuse to comply with vaccine mandates.
Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that some of the largest US hospital systems have dropped vaccine mandates for workers amid soaring labor costs and struggles retaining enough nurses, technicians, 'and even janitors' to handle higher hospitalization rates due to the Delta variant.
According to hospital execs, public health authorities and nursing groups, pre-pandemic shortages of workers, including nurses, have been compounded by burnout, as well as the lucrative lure of nurses who work on short-term contracts in Covid hot spots.
More recently, thousands of nurses have left the industry or lost their jobs rather than get vaccinated. As of September, 30% of workers at more than 2,000 hospitals across the country surveyed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were unvaccinated.
"It’s been a mass exodus, and a lot of people in the healthcare industry are willing to go and shop around," according to employment attorney Wade Symons, head of Mercer's US regulatory practice. "If you get certain healthcare facilities that don’t require it, those could be a magnet for those people who don’t want the vaccine. They’ll probably have an easier time attracting labor."
In November, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services didn't have the authority to force healthcare workers to take the jab - blocking a Biden admin rule which would have applied to some 10 million workers and would have required all employees at facilities participating in Medicare / Medicaid take the jab by Jan. 4.
"I don’t think the mandates were helpful and I think the court in Louisiana did everyone a service," said Ballad Health CEO Alan Levine, who oversees the administration of 21 hospitals in Tennessee and Virginia.
Mr. Levine said his company has about 14,000 employees, some 2,000 of whom are unvaccinated or didn’t request an exemption to the requirement. “That many people having to be terminated would have been devastating to our system,” Mr. Levine said. -WSJ
Meanwhile, one of the country's largest healthcare providers, HCA, suspended their previous deadline of Jan. 4 for all workers following the court halt.
"We continue to strongly encourage our colleagues to be vaccinated as a critical step to protect individuals from the virus," said spokesman Harlow Sumerford, who added that a majority of their roughly 275,000 workers were fully vaccinated.
Tenet and AdventHealth also announced that they were waiving the requirement following the court decision, while the Cleveland Clinic - which runs 19 hospitals in Ohio and Florida and employees roughly 65,000 people, along with Utah hospital giant Intermountain Healthcare, said they would similarly suspend the vax requirement.
These people have been working for almost two years without being vaccinated. What is the problem?? We know what to do when a case pops up.
Locally (Seattle area), nurses unions are today pushing a labor driven legislative agenda that hospitals are understaffed due to nurse burn out.
Predictably, they are asking the State for stricter work rules (more laws) sympathetic to their unions.
Nothing said about the number fired over vax regulations. Just “burn out”
Tell this to the hundreds/thousands of HCWs who’ve either lost their jobs...or, worse....already took the hazardous $hots 😢
The problem is that the big pharma CEOs are getting only $400 million bonuses when they could be getting $500 million.
Yeah... as if the workers they fired are jumping for joy and cant wait to come back to work to be berated for their “choice” that got them fired.
They have most likely moved on to an area that didn’t do this to their work force.
Eat properly and exercise regularly. I hope to never see another doctor again. Too many revealed themselves as communists over the past 2 years.
"Voting with your feet" - What a concept!
Obviously, these health workers have too much freedom, and it's gone to their head!
Regards,
....and they don’t work...l
So true. Doctors were among the first to run for cover. They figure you can’t practice, unless you can practice.
Odd because they are threatening NG with discharged for not getting vaxxed.
p
I got called on a Wednesday and asked if I was getting the shot. I said no and was told I would taken off of the schedule as of the following Monday (I work part time as a respiratory therapist). On Sunday after the mandate I received a call asking me if I wanted to work Monday. No apology or even acknowledgment of what had been done earlier in the week. I said no and haven’t worked since. I’m unsure at this point if I will work in healthcare again or not and I think there are a lot more like me out there.
This is where “liberal fantasy meets reality”. You can’t force 100% of people in a free society to do anything. In the case of COVID the hospitals that they claimed to want to protect are now collapsing for lack of workers. A handful of medically trained National Guardsman are not going to change that reality on a statewide basis. The same will happen with “Renewable Energy” when the cost of electricity starts to bite this winter in places like Germany and eventually the USA.
“This is where “liberal fantasy meets reality”.”
They never learn. Even in unfree societies like the old Soviet Union, people found ways to undermine or get around the party line edicts they didn’t like.
yep
My county has ~ 78,000 population.
The CV2019 stats say that ~13,000 of us have had covid.
That sure seems awfully high to me - 1 in 6??
No way!
“...amid soaring labor costs and struggles retaining enough” personnel.
Yes, and one hopes they’re also reconsidering amid all the evidence to their highly trained eyes, that the so-called vaccines aren’t effective. But no, they’re still recommending them.
They’re only rethinking because their accountants are alarmed.
“a Biden admin rule which would have applied to some 10 million workers”
There must be 10 million illegal aliens who are not subject to the rule, and more on the way. They will replace the others. They will work. They will register to vote, too.
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