Hospital officials in St. Louis say the vast majority of their employees have gotten the COVID-19 vaccine by the fall deadlines administrators set earlier this summer.
While some hospital officials would lead people to quit rather than get the vaccine, there hasn鈥檛 been a mass exodus of workers, said Dr. Clay Dunagan, the head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force.
鈥淭hat turns out to be a very tiny part of the workforce, and it's really not compromising health care operations,鈥� he said.
In early July, the region鈥檚 four largest hospital systems 鈥� Mercy, BJC HealthCare, SSM Health and St. Luke鈥檚 鈥� or face weekly coronavirus testing. Administrators said workers who did not comply would be suspended and fired.
Hospital systems offered exemptions from the mandate for religious or health reasons. They had different deadlines, but all required their workers to be vaccinated by October.
About 40 workers at BJC Healthcare, where Dunagan is the chief clinical officer, decided against getting vaccinated, he said. That represents less than 1% of more than 30,000 workers in the health system.
Officials at other hospitals say most workers have complied but declined to give detailed numbers.
鈥淭he vast majority of our employees in the St. Louis region were compliant with the vaccine mandate,鈥� said a spokeswoman for SSM Health. 鈥淲e continue to work with the small number of employees who were not vaccinated at that time.鈥�
Mercy and BJC Healthcare have suspended employees who have not yet been vaccinated against the coronavirus, representatives of the hospitals said. If they don鈥檛 get the vaccine soon, they鈥檒l be fired from their jobs.
Hospitals in St. Louis, Kansas City and other major metropolitan areas are less likely to view vaccine mandates as an employment risk, Dunagan said. 鈥淏ut I know in smaller hospitals and in more rural settings, it鈥檚 been viewed as a real threat. 鈥� I know some places shied away from issuing mandates for that purpose.鈥�
That all four major hospital systems in the region issued their mandates during the same week likely persuaded skeptical workers to get vaccinated, said Alex Pennington, an emergency nurse at a St. Louis hospital.
鈥淚 think most people kind of came around with the mandate, especially since all the hospitals locally acted together,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 just, 鈥榃ell, I'm going to go to a different hospital.鈥� It was like, 鈥業'm either going to do this mandate, which I'm a little upset about, or I'm going to have to move to rural Kentucky.鈥欌��
Most of the people in his department had gotten the vaccine within a month of it becoming available for health care workers, Pennington said. But there were a few holdouts.
鈥淚t鈥檚 kind of nice to know that there's probably only three or four people there that have exemptions and that aren't vaccinated,鈥� he said.
In September, President Joe Biden announced the federal governmentor routine testing for all United States health care workers as well as federal employees and contractors.
The president directed OSHA to implement the new policy, which has yet to go into effect.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Alex Pennington's first name.
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