How Philadelphia Achieved High Vaccination Rate for Health Workers

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Sat, 2021-12-11 06:42 — mike kraft

While the national vaccine mandate for health care workers remains mired in the federal courts, government officials say there is ample proof that requirements work — and do not cause a mass exodus of employees that some critics had feared.

Philadelphia, which issued a vaccine mandate in August, would seem to be a case in point. Virtually all hospital employees there are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to a group of local hospitals that met last week with officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which issued the national rule. About 95 percent of nursing home employees are also fully vaccinated, according to the city health department, compared with an average of 75 percent across the country.

With several states, including Pennsylvania, reporting sharp increases in Covid cases and hospitalizations and the arrival of the new Omicron variant, vaccine protection for health care workers is once again a critical tool.

Pennsylvania now has one of the country’s highest hospitalization rates. “Covid continues to rage on,” Dr. Jaewon Ryu, the chief executive of one of the state’s largest hospital groups, Geisinger, said at a news conference. Its intensive-care units are overwhelmed, he said.

In Philadelphia alone, 366 people were hospitalized in early December, compared with around 200 before Thanksgiving, according to city data.

The city’s hospitals and nursing homes were able to achieve high vaccination rates without significant staff departures. “At the end of the day, very few people quit,” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the agency’s administrator, said in an interview after the meeting.

Ms. Brooks-LaSure said it was important that hospitals and nursing homes educate their workers about the benefits of the vaccine and address safety concerns, although she added that local and workplace orders clearly influenced higher vaccination rates.

About 40 percent of the nation’s hospitals have vaccine requirements, and numerous states and cities imposed them for health care workers. In New York, which issued a mandate in late August, about 96 percent of hospital and nursing home workers are fully vaccinated, according to state data.

In states without mandates, like Oklahoma, about a third of nursing home workers are not fully vaccinated, and there have been thousands of recent cases among residents and staff.

At Crozer Health, a hospital group based in Springfield, Pa., the vaccination rate among workers climbed to 98 percent from 65 percent, largely because the area’s hospitals all had similar requirements and faced the looming federal mandate, Conlen Booth, Crozer’s senior director of emergency preparedness, said. “Staff understood there was no other alternative,” he said. ...

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