The health system announced its vaccination mandate for employees June 30. The policy requires that employees be fully vaccinated or have a medical or religious exemption before Oct. 1. Those who do not comply will receive a verbal warning for noncompliance the week of Sept. 27, followed by a written warning if they are still not compliant the week of Oct. 4. Employees who are noncompliant the week of Oct. 11 will be suspended, and those who are not compliant as of Oct. 18 will be terminated.
As of Sept. 21, about 700 of the system’s roughly 30,000 employees were not yet vaccinated, according to Thomas Balcezak, MD, chief clinical officer of Yale New Haven Health.
Marna Borgstrom, the system’s CEO, said most people she is aware of are making the decision to resign at the end of September if they remain unvaccinated, but she expects that many people who are not yet vaccinated will be inoculated by the health system’s deadline, according to the Citizen.
“We’ve done everything possible in my opinion to do this the right way and as humanely as possible, not only for our patients and their loved ones but also for our valued colleagues, and I think the number of people who end up exiting the organization is going to be relatively small,” Ms. Borgstrom said, according to the Citizen.
Yale New Haven Health is among the hospitals and health systems in the U.S that are mandating COVID-19 vaccination. Some organizations have already lost workers who refused to get vaccinated. Among the most recent: About 60 employees resigned from their jobs at UNC Health, citing the Chapel Hill, N.C.-based system’s vaccination requirement.
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