‘Incredibly proud’ Duke Health says it fired very few workers over COVID vaccine mandate
In July, Duke Health told its nearly 23,000 employees that they would need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by September to continue working for the health system.
In the end, fewer than 20 were fired Tuesday for not meeting that deadline.
Duke Health leaders say they didn’t want to lose anyone but are happy the mandate helped them meet their goal of protecting their workers and patients and the community from COVID-19.
“We are incredibly proud of the commitment our team members have made to embody our core value of caring for our patients, their loved ones and each other,” Duke officials said in a written statement.
Duke was one of several North Carolina hospital systems that decided in July to make vaccination a condition of employment. With the more contagious delta variant of the coronavirus fueling a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, hospital leaders decided that voluntary vaccination was not enough.
Duke employees had until Sept. 21 to either get vaccinated or obtain an exemption for medical or religious reasons. Fewer than 200 missed that deadline; they were put on unpaid leave and given until Tuesday to either get the first shot of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
A little more than 6% of Duke employees were granted a waiver from the vaccine requirement for either medical or religious reasons, said Katie Galbraith, president of Duke Regional Hospital in Durham, one of three Duke hospitals in the Triangle.
Among the other hospital systems with a vaccine mandate was Winston-Salem-based Novant Health, which said Monday that it had fired about 175 of its 35,000-plus employees for not complying.
UNC Health says more than 98% of 29,000 workers covered by its mandate have either gotten vaccinated or an approved exemption. As of Tuesday morning, it was still working to confirm the vaccination status of about 500 workers, who have until Nov. 2 to comply. Those 500 workers are on probation and have lost at least 25% of their annual performance bonus.
The Triangle’s third big hospital system, WakeMed, also will require its employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19, but its deadline is Nov. 12.
Mandate wasn’t the only factor
Duke estimated that 70% or more of its employees were already vaccinated when it announced the mandate on July 22. Until then, hospitals didn’t track who had been vaccinated, so they had to ask workers to provide proof.
Supervisors worked with employees who weren’t vaccinated, to hear their concerns and answer their questions. Duke also arranged town hall meetings where employees could hear from the health system’s own experts on vaccines and infectious disease.
Other factors spurred some employees to get vaccinated. The FDA’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine last month won over some who were put off by the fact that until then it had been authorized for use on an emergency basis.
And more than anyone, health care workers could see first hand the severity of this summer’s surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations, which overwhelmingly involved unvaccinated people.
Still, for all their knowledge and motivation, it took work to persuade Duke workers to comply with the vaccination requirement, Galbraith said.
“It’s just a reminder of the fact that we do still need to listen and meet people where they are, and share the facts with them, share the science with them, share the data with them, so that they can make a really well-informed choice,” she said in an interview.
UNC Health said last week that about 70 of its employees had quit citing the vaccination mandate. Galbraith said Duke is still trying to determine how many workers resigned for that reason, rather than wait to get fired.
“I know of very few at Duke Regional, less than a handful,” she said. “But I can’t speak for the whole system.”
While any loss of employees is “regrettable,” Galbraith said, the departures over the vaccine mandate “won’t have an impact on patient care.”
Front-line health care workers have had access to Pfizer and Moderna vaccines since last winter. The federal government has now said health care workers can get a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine to boost their immunity.
Both Duke and UNC say they are not requiring their employees to get the booster.
This story was originally published September 29, 2021 at 1:22 PM.
