Erie County Medical Center Corp. has terminated 60 unvaccinated employees who were previously allowed religious exemptions, adding to the several hundred Western New York health care workers who lost their jobs in recent days over the state's Covid-19 vaccine mandate.
The terminations, which occurred Saturday, included 51 employees at ECMC's main hospital and nine from Terrace View Long-Term Care facility, spokesperson Peter Cutler said Wednesday. That is less than 2% of ECMC's total workforce.
It appears ECMC also had success getting some unvaccinated workers to get a shot as the deadline neared, judging from how many employees were in line to be terminated just two weeks ago.
In fact, ECMC had notified 151 employees with religious exemptions on Nov. 24 that they had to be vaccinated and provide proof by Dec. 3.
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While the state's vaccine mandate for health care workers went into effect Sept. 27, a court ruling temporarily allowed employees to claim a religious exemption to get around the requirement that they must have a Covid-19 vaccine. That ruling was stayed by a federal appellate court in late October, leaving medical exemptions as the only allowed protections to the mandate.
After receiving guidance from the state Health Department, health care employers across the state began notifying unvaccinated employees in mid-November that their religious exemptions were expiring.
While the number of workers who lost or are losing their jobs is a small percentage of total workers, every little bit hurts amid a staffing shortage that means hospitals can't operate as many beds – especially during yet another wave of Covid-19 hospitalizations.
Outside of ECMC, Kaleida Health said it terminated 100 unvaccinated employees Monday who had a religious exemption, or about 1% of its total workforce. Two weeks earlier, there were 190 employees with religious exemptions at Kaleida who were in jeopardy of losing their jobs.
Catholic Health System mailed out termination letters Tuesday to 180 unvaccinated employees, or about 2% of its workforce. As of Nov. 23, roughly 300 Catholic Health employees were unvaccinated with religious exemptions.
The employees with religious exemptions who lost their jobs are in addition to those health care workers who were terminated after not getting vaccinated before the state's original Sept. 27 deadline.
On Sept. 27, ECMC put 84 unvaccinated employees on administrative leave without pay, and 39 of them were terminated when the leave ended Oct. 28.
Another seven ECMC employees were terminated in late November for not completing their vaccine series by the deadline.
All told, including the 60 let go Saturday as religious exemptions expired, ECMC terminated 106 employees over the state's vaccine mandate, or about 3% of its workforce.
While that's a small percentage, it still tightens a staffing crunch that ECMC and other health care providers are grappling with across the region. Terrace View, for example, currently has 12 National Guard members assisting its staff.
The help arrives just as Erie County reported its highest-ever weekly count of new Covid-19 cases – 5,535 in the week that ended Saturday.
The staffing situation, along with rising Covid-19 hospitalizations, are major reasons why several Western New York hospitals are near or at capacity.
According to state Health Department data, all 343 of ECMC's staffed acute care beds were occupied Tuesday.
The hospital is one of six Western New York facilities and 32 across the state where the Health Department can start limiting nonessential, nonurgent procedures scheduled to occur on or after Thursday in an effort to preserve staffed bed availability. All of those hospitals have less than 10% of staffed acute care beds available.
While ECMC hasn't done inpatient elective surgeries since September, it must also defer all nonessential elective outpatient procedures within the hospital.
