Nationwide, about 81% of nursing home staff members already were fully vaccinated as of earlier this month, ranging from a high of 98% in Rhode Island to a low of 67% in Missouri, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The data is unclear about the vaccination levels in hospitals and other health care sites.The mandate ultimately will cover 10.4 million health care workers at 76,000 facilities.It is taking effect first in jurisdictions that didn’t challenge the requirement in court.
Those include some of the biggest states, with some of the largest populations of senior citizens, among them: California, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania."There absolutely have been employee resignations because of vaccination requirements," said Catherine Barbieri, a Philadelphia attorney at Fox Rothschild who represents health care providers.
But "I think it’s relatively small."At Wilson Medical Center in rural Neodesha, Kansas, three of the roughly 180 employees are quitting, and several others have sought exemptions from the vaccine mandate, said hospital spokeswoman Janice Reese."We are very fortunate that that is all we are losing," she said, noting that the hospital was not in favor of the mandate. "We didn’t feel like it was our place to actually try to tell a person what they had to do."Reese said the vaccine requirement could also make it more difficult for the hospital to fill vacancies.In Florida, medical centers find themselves caught between dueling federal and state vaccination policies.