Essentia Health and St. Luke’s will require employees to be vaccinated

Later today, St. Luke’s, Duluth’s second-largest supplier, followed suit with a similar policy that has an earlier deadline.

Essentia issued a statement saying that after careful consideration it will require all staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of their employment.

The requirement will apply to anyone entering the facilities to provide services to Essentia Health, including all of its on-site employees, remote workers, volunteers, students, non-employee medical personnel, vendors, entrepreneurs and board members.

Employees are expected to receive their first dose of the vaccine by October 1 and their second dose of a two-dose series by November 1. There will be a medical exemption request process based on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. or a religious exemption.

Essentia President Dr Jon Pryor conceded that there would likely be some fallout due to the vaccine’s mandate.

“I would say based on the experiences of other healthcare providers and common sense, out of 13,000 employees there will be some, for some reason – you just have to respect their thinking – who don’t want the vaccine. , and therefore ultimately they will not be employed here. So, yes, I expect that we will lose employees, “he said.

Pryor said this fear of losing employees has made some already understaffed health care providers reflect.

“I think the other way of looking at it, however, is that by keeping our employees healthy and safe we ​​are less likely to lose them to COVID or force them into self-quarantine. So in the long term, it’s going to be beneficial to be able to have the necessary resources to care for patients. And above all, it’s going to be reassuring for our patients to know that we are doing everything possible to keep them safe. account, this is the most important obligation we have, ”he said.

By requiring employees to be vaccinated, Essentia will join the ranks of other healthcare providers who have done the same, including the Mayo Clinic, Sanford, Fairview and Allina healthcare systems. Minneapolis-based Children’s Minnesota also announced an employee vaccination mandate on Wednesday. To date, Pryor has noted that about 500 health systems across the country have required their employees to get vaccinated, and he said he expects that number to continue to rise.

St. Luke’s originally planned to recommend vaccination. But the supplier has changed course and now requires that all employees, suppliers, volunteers and board members receive the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine or file a religious or medical exemption by September 1 and that they have completed the series of vaccines by October. 1, according to a statement Wednesday from St. Luke’s co-chairman / CEO and chief medical officer, Dr Nicholas Van Deelen.

“We understand that people have strong beliefs about this,” Van Deelen said. “Ultimately, the policy is to keep our patients and staff safe and to reduce community transmission of serious disease.”

St. Luke’s reports that 78% of all its employees and 97% of its physicians are fully immunized.

Regarding the vaccination rate at Essentia, the healthcare provider said he believes his staff’s vaccination rate is similar to that of other large healthcare systems in the Midwest. But Essentia has not tracked the vaccinations of its employees since mid-March.

He reported: “At that time, 87% of our physicians and 84% of our advanced practice providers were vaccinated, while 70% of those in other roles who were eligible for the vaccine had been vaccinated. Of course, since that time everyone has become eligible and we have strongly encouraged anyone who can be vaccinated to do so, especially healthcare workers whose duty it is to protect vulnerable, elderly and critically ill patients in the near future. communities we serve. “

While COVID-19 vaccines have been found to be effective and approved for emergency use, many employers have waited for staff to be vaccinated until the Food and Drug Administration fully approves the vaccines for general use. This approval is now expected for Labor Day.

Pryor acknowledged that the expectation of full approval was factored into Essentia’s decision making.

He said Essentia staff also hoped that the vaccination rate among the general public would now have exceeded 70%.

“I mean, nobody likes to impose things. And we were hoping we didn’t have a fourth push, but that’s not happening,” Pryor said.

“I want to remind everyone: we are still in a much better place than we were,” he said. But Pryor called the virus and the risk it poses to the still unvaccinated population “a threat to our way of life.”

“It’s a threat to our economy. It’s a threat to us to be able to interact socially. And we finally felt – after studying that and looking at the legal implications and thinking about all the pros and cons and listening to the leaders opinion on the subject, talking to ethicists, and so on – we felt that was the best course of action, ”he said.

This story was updated at 6:50 p.m. on August 4 with additional comments from St. Luke President Nicholas Van Deelen and corrected at 9:07 p.m. to correct its title. It was previously updated with comments from Essentia President Jon Pryor at 3:40 p.m. on August 4. It was originally posted at 1:30 p.m. on August 4.

Teri Cadeau from the News Tribune contributed to this story.