Hospitals and nursing homes in West Virginia already face staffing shortages, and Governor Jim Justice fears a looming Covid vaccine requirement for employees at those facilities will exacerbate the situation.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a vaccine mandate for employees of health care facilities that provide CMS services which is scheduled to go into effect at the end of this month.
Justice believes the deadline will lead some hospital and nursing home employees to quit rather than get the shot. He said earlier this week that rural facilities could be hit particularly hard.
The staffing issue has become so acute that 275 West Virginia National Guard members have been dispatched to 34 health care facilities to help.
“We in our rural hospitals are desperate to keep the doors open as far as staffing,” Justice said. “We have got to do that.”
West Virginia has joined with Virginia to ask for leniency. Representatives of both states had a conference call with CMS officials Thursday morning to state their case. West Virginia Covid-19 Task Force Chair Jim Hoyer, who was on the call, characterized the discussions as “productive.”
“We’re more looking at the time of implementation of those requirements, to give us time to work through this latest surge and get off the peak,” Hoyer said on Talkline Thursday.
The relief, according to a letter signed by Justice and Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin and sent to CMS, could come in the form of “broader conscience exemptions, flexibility on enforcement, or simply a six month delay of the rule.”
Hospitals are utilizing traveling nurses to try to fill vacancies as cases surge. That is an expensive, but essential, mechanism for filling staffing gaps. However, Hoyer said about one-third of them are not vaccinated, meaning they would be unavailable when the CMS rule kicks in, right when Covid hospitalizations are peaking in the state.
Justice has been a consistent and ardent advocate for Covid vaccines and boosters as life savers. Just this week Justice said, “My gut tells me that these deaths are going up because we’re not boosted how we need to be,” Justice said. “That is something you really need to take to heart.”
It stands to reason that individuals who work in health care settings should be required to take greater pandemic precautions. Last November, the American Hospital Association announced its support of the CMS rule. The “vaccine mandate regulations set clear expectations, and streamline and simplify compliance requirements for health care providers,” said AHA president and CEO Rick Pollack.
However, the desire of Justice and leading health officials for people to get vaccinated, especially individuals who work in health care settings, is colliding with the reality of staffing shortages at health care facilities.