Another Kansas City health care system mandates COVID vaccinations for employees
Saint Luke’s Health System will require employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 30, hospital officials announced Monday.
The move will affect about 35% of the system’s 12,000 employees who are not vaccinated yet, they said.
Saint Luke’s joins Truman Medical Centers/University Health in mandating employee vaccinations. Kansas City hospitals are pushed to a stressful brink of surging COVID cases and hospitalizations as the contagious delta variant takes hold.
ICU beds and staff are in short supply, and pediatric cases and hospitalizations are rising, too, a growing concern as children go back to school.
On Monday, Saint Luke’s had 165 COVID-19 patients among all of its hospital locations, about 50 of them in ICU. But it’s not just COVID patients straining the system.
“We’re talking about large numbers of patients who have other conditions that need care, need our emergency rooms, need hospitalizations,” Saint Luke’s president and CEO, Dr. Melinda L. Estes told The Star.
“Heart attacks and strokes and accidents happen every day, pandemic or not. If we don’t have beds to care for these patients, that is just unacceptable. If we don’t have staff to care for these patients, that creates a situation that I don’t think Saint Luke’s has ever seen, and it is just imperative that we not let that happen.
“And vaccination is really the key … because it will end the pandemic. It allows us to care for everybody and to do no harm, which is really our mission and we’ve been doing that for over 100 years in this community.”
The hospital’s vaccination requirement applies to all health care system employees, licensed independent medical staff members, allied health professionals, contracted personnel, student affiliates and volunteers, too.
Employees can request a medical or religious exemption, which will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by either Saint Luke’s clinicians or Saint Luke’s Spiritual Wellness chaplains.
Employees granted an exemption will be required to undergo weekly COVID-19 testing and monitoring.
New employees will be required to be fully vaccinated within 45 days of starting.
Several health care organizations have endorsed mandatory vaccinations for health professionals, including the American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, American Nurses Association and American Academy of Pediatrics.
Earlier this month, the University of Missouri Health Care system also announced it is requiring employees, students and providers to become fully vaccinated by Oct. 1. Like Saint Luke’s, exemptions will be given for medical or religious reasons.
Some hospitals, including the University of Kansas Health System, have said they were waiting for the vaccines to receive full Food and Drug Administration approval before mandating them. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine received full approval for use in people ages 16 and older on Aug. 23.
“The data has demonstrated overwhelmingly that the vaccines are safe, effective, and our best opportunity to end the spread of this virus,” said Estes. “There is no question this decision will save lives and is the right thing to do.”
Truman, which announced its mandate in late July, gave its 4,500 employees until Sept. 20 to get vaccinated, also offering medical and religious exemptions.
The move was meant to send a message to the public that the vaccines are safe and that Truman believes in them.
“To date now, we’ve given these vaccines to nearly 190 million people across the country, and there is no one in the major medical community that has any concerns about these vaccines and the high effectiveness of them,” said Dr. Mark Steele, Truman’s executive chief clinical officer.
The COVID-19 vaccinations will be a condition of employment, Estes said.
“All our employees are valuable. We don’t want to lose any of them,” she said. “But I know that there will probably be people who choose to leave us because they do not wish to be vaccinated.
“But if I step back, our mission as a health care organization is to provide care. It is a patient safety issue, it is a team safety issue, it’s a community issue, and it’s the right thing to do. So we hope we can provide education for employees who are hesitant and retain all of them, but I do recognize that there will be people who choose differently.”
Jackson and Johnson counties, as well as Kansas City Public Schools, have told employees they must either be vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID tests.
Several Kansas City area restaurants and venues, including the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and RecordBar, will require patrons to show proof of full vaccination.
“We would welcome all employers in Kansas City … to join us,” Estes said, “because I think the more people who are vaccinated, we can end this pandemic.”
This story was originally published August 30, 2021 at 3:18 PM.
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