New York Governor Kathy Hochul says the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for hospital workers has not caused any major crises in the first three days of the requirement, but says staffing shortages and ongoing court action are creating uncertainty.
Hochul says 92% of all hospital workers in the state have received at least one dose of the vaccine. The Democrat says vaccination rates for nursing home staff and home health care workers are also rising in anticipation of an October 7 mandate that they also get vaccinated or lose their jobs.
Despite that, the governor estimates that hundreds of hospitals workers have been laid off or suspended for refusing the vaccine. The state does not keep those numbers. Some hospitals have postponed elective surgeries or temporarily closed down satellite offices.
She says the outcome of a court case challenging the state’s rule that disallows religious exemptions could cause deeper staffing shortages. Some health care facilities have allowed workers seeking the exemption to remain on staff while a court challenge is heard. Legal arguments will be heard early in October.
Hochul says thousands of student nurses and other health care workers have been authorized to be deployed, if necessary, through an emergency executive order she issued Monday that waives existing licensing rules.
“We are staffing up and we’re getting ready for the possibility of more people who have been granted this leeway from their employers,” Hochul said. “Some people have been furloughed pending the outcome.”
So far, the state has not had to deploy National Guard troops or import workers from other countries to ease the staffing shortage.
Hochul also addressed a little-known provision in the emergency order that temporarily prevents insurance companies from challenging claims submitted by hospitals.
A memo from Kenneth Raske, head of the Greater New York Hospital Association, takes credit for the provision.
In the memo, obtained by the fiscal watchdog group the Empire Center, Raske writes that his group “strongly advocated for those suspensions and thanks the Governor for her decisive action on them.”
Hochul says she enacted the ban to free up nurses and other staff to focus more on direct patient care.
“There are so many licensed health care professionals including doctors and nurses and others who spend a lot of time having to do this paperwork,” Hochul said. “When, in fact, if there is a crisis, they could be deployed by their hospital to actually be on the floor and help people.”
Hochul also commented on discrepancies, first reported in the Albany Times Union, between vaccine mandates for hospital workers and for health care workers in the state’s mental health care facilities and prisons. Workers in the state Office of Mental Health and Department of Corrections have the option of weekly testing instead of getting the vaccine.
Hochul says those agencies are not under the control of the state Health Department, which issued the mandates for the hospital workers. But she says she’s working through the legal details to discontinue the testing option in the other state agencies.
“They need to be vaccinated,” said Hochul. “Testing will not be an option. I just have to get the regulations to make sure that when we get the inevitable lawsuit that we have all the protections and defenses to make sure we can establish that we did this properly. That is going to happen.”
Hochul says she’ll be making an announcement on changing those rules shortly.
