2 Georgia hospital teams require worker vaccine

Piedmont Healthcare and St. Mary’s Health Care require employees to be vaccinated.

ATLANTA – Most Georgians still haven’t received the full round of COVID-19 vaccinations. Only 39 percent were fully vaccinated on Tuesday.

But more and more hospitals across the country are requiring their staff to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, or staff to be laid off.

So far, there are two hospital groups in Georgia that require vaccinations for employees, with a few exceptions. Not all healthcare workers believe mandates make patients or them safer.

But they may not have recourse.

Atlanta-based Piedmont Healthcare, with its 11 hospitals, officially announced this week that all 23,000 employees must now be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (see full statement below).

No employee can refuse, with a few exceptions.

As 11Alive first reported last month, from September 1st, all new employees in Piedmont, as well as doctors and providers, will be in the first group required for vaccination. The rest of the staff will be picked up later.

Only one other hospital group in Georgia, St. Mary’s Health Care System, has so far required that staff at its three hospitals be vaccinated.

St. Mary’s said most of its staff are already vaccinated (see full explanation below).

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Emory Healthcare in Atlanta is encouraging but does not yet require employees to be vaccinated, but said Tuesday that more than two-thirds of its workforce received the vaccinations voluntarily.

“Emory Healthcare does not require COVID-19 vaccination for its employees while the vaccines are under emergency clearance from the FDA,” a hospital spokesman said in an email to 11Alive on Tuesday. “We will continue to review ongoing safety and efficacy data and reassess our decision after full FDA approval.” (Full explanation below)

It was only a month ago in Texas when the Houston Methodist became the nation’s first hospital to require staff to receive the COVID-19 vaccines.

About 150 of the 24,000 employees refused and they lost their jobs – including a veteran nurse, Jennifer Bridges, who doesn’t believe the vaccines are safe. Bridges said none of her patients had ever asked her if she was vaccinated.

“She never cared if I was vaccinated,” said Bridges. “And we all wear the right PPE anyway. So, vaccinated or not, we won’t spread anything. “

But a federal judge in Houston ruled the hospital had the right to order the vaccinations and dismiss the protesters, setting a legal precedent.

Still, Georgia Health News reported two weeks ago that “a worrying number of hospital workers nationwide are still unvaccinated,” based on federal data.

According to a study by Georgia Health News, an average of one in four has not had the injections.

But, according to Beckers Hospital Review, 31 hospitals and health systems in the US have been requiring vaccination of employees as of Tuesday night, with the exception of those with medical, religious or other exceptions.

Hundreds of thousands of hospital workers nationwide are under the mandate so far, with more joining the two hospital groups in Georgia so far.

Below are the statements 11Alive received from the local hospitals.

HEALTH CARE PIEDMONT:

In order to offer our patients and our team the safest environment, from September 1st we require Piedmontese executives, doctors, providers and new employees with a few exceptions a full vaccination against COVID-19. This is in line with our policy of requiring new employees to have a vaccination certificate or titer to confirm immunity to measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) and varicella, and to require the annual flu vaccination for all current employees. The rest of our Piedmont family will need to be fully vaccinated in the near future. It’s important to remember that vaccinations are an important factor in making patients and team members feel safe in a healthcare facility, as research we’ve conducted shows. In addition, it is in line with our counterparts from other leading healthcare systems in the United States.

We are inspired by how our Piedmont team has grown during the pandemic and are proud to have made this decision to strengthen Piedmont’s role as a pioneer in helping our communities achieve safety and wellbeing. As a health organization, science underlies our fundamental goal, and in this case science has shown a clear way forward.

NS. MARY’S HEALTH CARE SYSTEM / TRINITY HEALTH:

As part of Trinity Health, St. Mary’s requires that all colleagues, clinical staff, contractors, and those doing business in our facilities be vaccinated against COVID-19. This requirement applies to Trinity Health’s more than 117,000 employees in 22 states nationwide and is being taken to stop the virus from spreading and to protect all patients, colleagues, and the broader communities we serve.

The requirement covers all three St. Mary’s Hospitals – St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens, St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital in Lavonia and St. Mary’s Good Samaritan Hospital in Greensboro – as well as our medical practices, outpatient facilities and old people’s homes.

Since December 2020, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first vaccine for emergency approval, the majority of Trinity Health colleagues have received at least one dose of the vaccine. The new policy aims to close the gap for the safety of all of our patients, colleagues and providers.

With more than 331 million safely administered doses in the U.S., it’s clear that the approved COVID vaccinations are safe and effective. Today, more than 99 percent of COVID-19 deaths occur in unvaccinated people. The time is ripe for this step, especially since the delta variant is spreading rapidly. The Delta variant is much more contagious and potentially deadly than previous forms of the virus. Natural immunity to the Delta variant is very low, even in those who have had another form of COVID. However, the vaccines have been shown to provide good protection against serious illness and death from all known variants of COVID, including Delta.

We know some colleagues have concerns about the vaccine. We reach out to all colleagues with town halls, team huddles and other interactive communications to answer their questions and address their concerns. We want them to know that the vaccine is safe, effective, and that they will be valued. Ultimately, it is our sacred duty to protect everyone we serve by making sure our providers and colleagues have the greatest possible protection from COVID-19 before it gets too cold.

HEALTH HEALTH:

Emory Healthcare strongly encourages our healthcare workers and providers without medical contraindications to receive the COVID-19 vaccine to protect our patients, themselves, each other, and our community. Emory vaccine clinics have been set up in a central location and in our hospitals for convenient access to our healthcare workers. More than two thirds of our workforce are vaccinated. Once employees and doctors receive their vaccination at Emory, no further action is required to prove the vaccination. If they are vaccinated outside of Emory, they will need to upload their CDC vaccination card to Emory’s staffing system. To date, Emory Healthcare has delivered more than 180,000 COVID-19 vaccinations to Emory Healthcare patients and staff, faculties, staff and students at Emory University, and members of the community since December 2020.

Emory Healthcare does not require COVID-19 vaccination for its employees while the vaccines are under emergency clearance from the FDA. We will continue to review the ongoing safety and efficacy data and reassess our decision upon full FDA approval.