As vaccine mandate looms, how many staff at Beaufort hospital have yet to get a shot?
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COVID-19 in the Lowcountry
Here’s the latest on the omicron variant surge, COVID-19 guidance and more in the Lowcountry.
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Dozens of Beaufort Memorial Hospital employees could be suspended, and ultimately fired, if they don’t get at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by Monday, according to recent hospital data.
Monday is the initial deadline for a new federal vaccine mandate at most health-care facilities that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, including the Beaufort hospital.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the mandate in a 5-4 ruling last month after South Carolina and several other states challenged it.
“There’s little doubt that we have to comply with the Medicare rule,” said Russell Baxley, CEO of Beaufort Memorial Hospital, in a recent interview. “The mandate has made it fairly straightforward, honestly, in these very controversial times.”
The hospital CEO on Jan. 31 said about 90% of the medical center’s roughly 1,600 employees had been fully vaccinated. Another 4% of staff members had received an approved medical or religious exemption to the hospital’s new vaccine policy, which mirrors the federal mandate.
About 6% of employees, or roughly 95 people, meanwhile, had not received an approved exemption or at least one vaccine dose, Baxley said.
The number of hospital employees who have yet to get a shot or an exemption may have dropped since Baxley’s Jan. 31 comments.
Up-to-date data was not immediately available Wednesday.
For context, the sprawling MUSC Health system early last summer fired just five employees who refused to comply with a new vaccine mandate.
“It’s been fairly smooth sailing, and honestly even before the mandate was there, 85% of our staff was vaccinated,” Baxley said. “I think we did a really good job educating the staff, being available to the staff, making sure we made vaccines available at very convenient times for them ... and just really had a campaign of encouragement around the vaccine, the efficacy and science behind it.”
He added there will always be people who reject vaccine mandates, but it’s a “very small group.”
Dee Robinson, a hospital spokeswoman, in a statement Tuesday wrote that if any employees do not comply with the vaccine mandate after Monday’s deadline, they will be suspended and could ultimately be fired.
“If they became compliant while on suspension, they would be reinstated,” Robinson wrote.
She declined to comment Wednesday on how long noncompliant employees would remain on suspension before being fired and whether they would be paid while out.
Baxley said the medical center is now requiring that new hires either be fully vaccinated or get an approved exemption.
A spokeswoman for Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, meanwhile, could not immediately provide a reporter with aggregate employee vaccine data for the Hilton Head Regional Healthcare system, which includes Hilton Head and Coastal Carolina hospitals.
“Hilton Head Regional Healthcare is complying with (the) federal mandate requiring all individuals working within our facility, regardless of clinical responsibility or patient contact, to receive a completed primary vaccination series for COVID-19, or receive a sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance exemption or a medical exemption,” spokeswoman Valerie Burrow wrote in a statement.
Other vaccine mandate struck down
Another vaccine mandate proposed by the Biden administration — which would have affected businesses employing 100 or more workers — was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the justices upheld the mandate that applies to health-care workers.
The mandate for health-care settings, which will be enforced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, requires that hospital employees be fully vaccinated by March 15 (or have an approved exemption).
Starting in mid-April, noncompliant health-care facilities “may be subject to enforcement action,” according to CMS.
The federal government says the only enforcement remedy for noncompliant hospitals will be to terminate their Medicare and Medicaid billing privileges, which is a devastating punishment for medical centers.
“CMS’s primary goal is to bring health-care facilities into compliance,” federal officials wrote last month.
Vaccine mandates remain deeply contentious in the United States.
A Monmouth University poll last month found that only 43% of Americans support mandates that require employees to show proof of vaccination to work in a setting where they are around other people.
But while some hospital vaccine rules have drawn protests and at least one lawsuit brought by employees, many health-care systems around the country have said their requirements are working well, noting widespread compliance.
Vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe COVID-19 cases, data show.
About 57.2% of Beaufort County’s population has been fully vaccinated, according to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.
COVID-19 surge is ending
The Lowcountry’s wave of omicron infections, meanwhile, has continued to recede.
Beaufort County’s seven-day average of newly confirmed coronavirus cases, as of Wednesday, had dropped to 110 infections per day.
Two weeks ago, that average was 263 cases per day.
Baxley, the Beaufort Memorial Hospital CEO, said the medical center hit a peak of about 30-35 COVID-19 inpatients during the latest surge, which began after the holidays.
“Most of those (infections) were not severe enough to necessarily need ICU (intensive care unit admission) or ventilation, which is really what delta was, right?” Baxley said.
The delta variant hit Beaufort County last summer. The hospital at one point in mid-September was treating 60 COVID-19 inpatients.
As of Jan. 31, the medical center had only 21 admitted coronavirus patients, Baxley said.
“These patients, they don’t stay as long with us ... we’re discharging inpatients faster and a lot of them are not requiring ICU care,” he said.
