PruittHealth, the Norcross-based company that operates about 170 care home communities in the Southeast, said Tuesday’s deadline was a moot point for them. They imposed a vaccination mandate last year, but the company’s CEO expects other companies to face some staff losses.
“[Some]vendors are crawling right now,” Pruitt said. “…But from our point of view, this is not an event for us.”
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which implemented the vaccination mandate, estimated that the mandate covers 17 million workers nationwide. The mandate applies to a wide range of healthcare providers, including physicians, nurses, technicians, rescuers, volunteers in hospitals, nursing homes and home care facilities, and other providers who receive funding through Medicare or Medicaid programs.
Facilities under the Fed’s vaccine mandate
All healthcare facilities overseen by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services fall under the federal government’s immunization mandate.
*Vaccines are required when performing services for a CMS regulated facility.
In its four-state system, PruittHealth fired 451 employees for refusing to get vaccinated — 258 of those layoffs took place in Georgia. The company currently employs more than 12,500 people, which is about 3,500 below the company’s pre-pandemic employment levels. During this time, PruittHealth facility occupancy dropped from 89% to 72.5%.
Pruitt said staffing remained a challenge, but he didn’t attribute it to the required shots. He said many healthcare workers have left nursing homes due to COVID-19 fears, forcing his company to look outside the United States. He said PruittHealth recently contracted 1,000 overseas nurses who have met immunization requirements to fill the gap.
DiscoverFull coverage: Coronavirus in Georgia
According to CMS data, approximately 85% of US nursing home staff are fully vaccinated. That’s slightly less than the 87% of nursing home residents who were fully vaccinated per facility.
In the general population, approximately 55% of Georgians are fully vaccinated, while 86% of nursing home residents have received a vaccination.
With the exception of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Northside, all hospital systems in the greater Atlanta area enacted their own vaccination requirements last year before the Supreme Court upheld federal vaccination requirements.
On Tuesday, a Northside spokeswoman said more than 99% of its employees were vaccinated and the rest had received approved exemptions. Questions about whether employees were noncompliant and could lose their jobs went unanswered.
“We are very pleased with the way Northsiders has responded and supported this important effort,” the spokeswoman said in an email.
A spokeswoman for children’s health services also gave no details but said the hospital system will enforce the mandate.
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Hospitals and health systems have kept quiet about the number of religious and medical exemptions they have granted their employees. Pruitt, who said 97% of his staff were vaccinated, stressed that they reviewed all exemption requests and issued multiple denials.
“We have been very strict about our exemptions,” he said, adding that they checked whether staff had received other vaccines in the past. If so, your request for a waiver has been denied.
Georgia was among 24 states with a Tuesday vaccination deadline. Texans are the only health care workers in the country who have more time to fulfill the mandate; her deadline is March 21st.
If a hospital doesn’t comply in a timely manner, CMS will help increase its vaccination rates before revoking its state insurance privileges.
“The goal of CMS is to bring healthcare facilities into compliance,” the federal agency said.
