After a delay, Idaho hospitals revived COVID-19 vaccine mandates. What was the outcome?
As COVID-19 cases spike again in the Treasure Valley, Idaho health care systems that have implemented vaccination requirements have reported high levels of compliance, while also offering exemptions to a subset of employees.
St. Luke’s Health System, the state’s largest hospital system, announced a COVID-19 vaccination requirement last summer. The mandate was put on hold when many hospitals entered crisis standards of care in September, but the hospital resumed enforcement on Nov. 22, when crisis standards were deactivated in most regions of the state.
The health system’s deadline for employees to either receive an initial dose or have requested a religious or medical exemption was Dec. 3, said a spokesperson, Christine Myron, in an email.
Six employees, or just 0.04% of St. Luke’s workforce, were fired due to noncompliance.
Since those terminations, 100% of the system’s nearly 17,000 employees have met the requirement of either being vaccinated or gaining an exemption, Myron said. Eleven percent of employees — around 1,900 people — received a medical exemption or religious accommodation, she said, and all requests for exemptions have been processed.
Saint Alphonsus Health System also announced a requirement last summer, and similarly paused it during crisis standards. The Saint Al’s deadline for employees to begin vaccination was in early December, said a hospital spokesperson, Mark Snider. While employees are also allowed to apply for exemptions, Snider would not say whether employees had to receive or only apply for those exemptions by the December deadline.
The hospital is at 100% compliance, Snider said, but Saint Al’s declined to report the number of employees who received religious or medical exemptions, or whether any employees were fired for refusing to comply.
Primary Health Medical Group, a health care provider in the Treasure Valley, also announced a mandate over the summer, with a deadline of September. A spokesperson declined to comment on the status of the requirement. Last July, Dr. David Peterman, CEO of Primary Health, said that roughly 80% of employees were vaccinated and that that the figure was “rapidly going up.”
Aside from individual hospital requirements, many health care facilities have been preparing to comply with a federal vaccine mandate, which would require employees at facilities that participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs — which includes many hospitals — to be vaccinated or receive an exemption. As of Dec. 15, the requirement is enjoined by federal courts in 25 states, including Idaho.
West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell never implemented a vaccine requirement, but the hospital “began working to implement a process to comply with the (federal) requirement” in November, according to an email from a spokesperson, Kaycee Emery.
As the requirement makes its way through the courts, West Valley’s requirement is on hold.
“We continue to strongly encourage our colleagues to be vaccinated as a critical step to protect individuals from the virus, and the majority of West Valley Medical Center colleagues have been fully vaccinated,” Emery said.
The Supreme Court will hold oral arguments on the health care worker requirements on Friday.
Cases of a new, highly contagious strain of the coronavirus, called omicron, have shot up across the country in recent weeks, causing record-breaking surges. On Monday, the U.S. reported more than 1 million new cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In Idaho, the Department of Health and Welfare has reported more than 4,500 new cases since Friday. The week of Dec. 26, the state reported 3,656 new cases.
