COVID-19 vaccine required for MercyOne staff

Syringes of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. (Andy Abeyta / The Gazette)

Staff at MercyOne’s Iowa facilities will need to receive a COVID-19 vaccine by this fall, which diverges from other local hospitals when it comes to requiring injections for employees.

Employees, contractors and anyone doing business at certain MercyOne healthcare facilities will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 21.

This includes the hospitals and associated medical clinics of MercyOne Dubuque, MercyOne Dyersville, MercyOne Clinton, MercyOne North Iowa, and MercyOne Western.

The mandate comes from MercyOne’s West Des Moines-based parent company, Trinity Health. The nonprofit Catholic Health Care System, headquartered in Chelsea, Michigan, operates 90 hospitals in 22 states, including Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

The requirement applies to more than 117,000 employees nationwide as part of an effort to “stop the spread of the virus and ensure the safety of all patients, colleagues and communities at large,” according to the Trinity Health officials who announced the new rule this week.

Almost 75% of Trinity Health employees have so far received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, officials said.

Exemptions are available for religious or health reasons, but must be formally requested, documented and approved. Employees who do not meet exemption criteria and do not show proof of vaccination will be fired, Trinity Health officials say told the Detroit Free Press.

“Vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective against symptomatic infections, hospitalizations and deaths, with more than 99% of deaths from COVID-19 today occurring in unvaccinated people,” MercyOne officials said in a statement.

The new vaccine requirement does not affect Mercy Iowa City because the rule only applies to MercyOne facilities directly related to Trinity Health, Mercy Iowa City spokesperson Aaron Scheinblum said.

“We have organized several regular vaccination clinics for our colleagues, just like we have done for the community, which has elicited a tremendous response,” Scheinblum wrote in an email.

Mercy Iowa City officials declined to provide the percentage of employees vaccinated.

A state law came into effect earlier this year that bans the so-called “Vaccine passports” and prohibits political entities from issuing identity cards revealing a person’s immunization status. However, this law does not apply to healthcare facilities, which means hospitals and some other businesses in Iowa are allowed to require employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

MercyOne requirement is a first for local hospitals

Other hospitals in the region have not taken steps to implement a vaccination requirement for clinical staff and other employees.

Officials at the state’s largest hospital, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, have previously said they do not plan to force vaccines on staff and employees.

More than 15,300 UIHC employees have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Friday, according to available data on the health system website.

UnityPoint Health-Cedar Rapids will not require the vaccine while it is under authorization for emergency use by federal authorities, spokeswoman Sarah Corizzo said. If and when it gets approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, “our leadership will be reassessed at that point,” she said.

So far, 72% of UnityPoint Health-Cedar Rapids employees have received the COVID-19 vaccine, officials said.

“At UnityPoint Health, the health and safety of our patients, communities and team members is at the center of everything we do,” said Corizzo. “Like many other healthcare organizations, as a healthcare system our policy is to strongly encourage but not to force team members to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Cedar Rapids’ Mercy Medical Center also did not require its staff to receive the vaccine. Officials declined to indicate the percentage of employees vaccinated, but said they were “very satisfied with our staff acceptance rate, which is well above the national average for hospitals and clinics.”

“We continue to closely monitor many variables including vaccination rate, incidence of COVID in the community and hospitalizations due to COVID,” said Dr. Tony Myers, chief medical officer at Mercy.

“Our primary focus continues to be the safety of our health care force so that we can take care of the residents of Linn County. We have daily conversations regarding all the actions needed to achieve this goal. “

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