COVID vaccine isn’t always required for IL nursing home workers. Are they taking it?
By late June, fewer than half of the health care personnel were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 at 20 out of 48 metro-east nursing homes, according to new vaccination rates the facilities reported to the federal government.
No southwest Illinois facility was at 100%, showing that some nursing home workers remain hesitant to take the vaccine despite an industry-wide effort to persuade them that started about six months ago.
The average among local facilities was 49%. The average for nursing homes in Illinois was 55%, according to a federal analysis.
Health officials and regulators continue to recommend that nursing home workers get the shot, but the state and federal governments don’t require it. Nursing homes are only required to offer the vaccine to all employees and residents and to educate them about it. It is up to individual employers to decide whether to make vaccination mandatory.
At least two organizations that operate nursing homes in the region have announced mandates for employees. Others worry that a requirement to take the vaccine would turn away qualified workers in an industry already struggling to find enough help. Some nursing homes are instead offering incentives to encourage their employees to get vaccinated, including bonus checks and a chance at a paid vacation.
“With the way the world is right now with finding staff, the last thing we need to do is find another reason people don’t want to work at Oak Hill or in long-term care,” said Waterloo’s Oak Hill Administrator Brian Koontz. “We don’t want to shrink our talent pool.”
Here is what the new vaccination statistics show for metro-east nursing homes, according to a Belleville News-Democrat analysis of the percentages they reported to the government on June 20:
- Less than one-half of the staff was fully vaccinated at 20 homes, including eight homes where less than one-third were vaccinated.
- One-half or more of the staff was fully vaccinated at 24 homes.
- The largest percentage of employees in a local nursing home who were vaccinated was 85%.
The statistics are self-reported by nursing home leaders to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, their federal regulatory agency. The agency publishes the information online weekly at data.cms.gov/stories/s/COVID-19-Nursing-Home-Data/bkwz-xpvg. It notes that numbers are subject to changes because nursing homes can make corrections to their data at any time.
June 20 was the latest date information was available this week. No employee vaccination data was published for four nursing homes in the region, including two facilities that reported all employees’ vaccination status was “unknown.”
Nursing home workers were among the first people eligible to receive the vaccine when supplies were limited. They were at the front of the line because of their increased risk of catching the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and spreading it to residents, who are often more vulnerable to it. Elderly people and those with existing health conditions are more likely to experience severe illness or die from COVID-19, according to experts.
Nationwide, 133,210 nursing home residents have died from the disease, including 7,198 people in Illinois and 560 people in the metro-east, according to statistics the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has compiled and published.
Nursing home residents gained access to the vaccine at the same time as the workers who care for them. But a larger proportion of nursing home residents are vaccinated on average in the metro-east. The region’s average was about 84%, according to the most recent statistics.
Nursing home workers are still required to wear face masks, wash their hands frequently and follow other rules on the job to prevent illness from spreading, regardless of their vaccination status. And unvaccinated employees continue to get tested for COVID-19 regularly.
Many people remain unvaccinated in the southwest Illinois communities surrounding the nursing homes, where workers may live, dine and shop. Across the region’s seven counties, about 40% of the population have received all of the necessary shots. (Some vaccines require two doses.)
The new vaccination information for nursing homes does not include the reasons workers have turned down the vaccine. Some local officials said they had employees decline the shot while pregnant or because of misinformation circulating online, for example, but they are hopeful that acceptance will continue to increase as more workers see friends, family and coworkers get vaccinated.
Vaccinated workers at Integrity Healthcare of Smithton are helping to build trust in the vaccines by sharing the details of their experience with colleagues, according to administrator Sara Hoover-Shaw. She said the nursing home’s percentage of fully-vaccinated staff increased from one-fourth on June 20 to about one-third, or 33%, on July 1.
Integrity of Smithton, like other local nursing homes, continues to host vaccination clinics so that anyone who decides they want the COVID-19 vaccine has access to it.
Consideration of vaccination requirement in nursing homes
BJC HealthCare and Lutheran Senior Services have announced that they are requiring all of their employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by September, including the workers at two nursing homes: Belleville’s Memorial Care Center and Glen Carbon’s Meridian Village Care Center.
Generally, employers can mandate vaccination, but they have to allow people to request exemptions for medical or religious reasons.
At Meridian Village, the proportion of vaccinated staff has grown from less than one-third in the earliest statistics it reported to about 50% on June 25. A spokesperson for Lutheran Senior Services provided the more recent percentage to the BND.
Elsewhere in the metro-east, leaders at Freeburg Care Center and Oak Hill said they have so far decided not to make vaccination mandatory because they are concerned about how it could affect staffing levels. They have each seen most, but not all, of their employees choose to take the vaccine. Freeburg Care Center was at 77% and Oak Hill was at 71% as of June 24, according to their administrators.
An official at WLC Management Firm, which operates care facilities in southern Illinois, said the company would not consider a mandate until a vaccine gets full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Three vaccines have been authorized for emergency use by the FDA in response to the pandemic following clinical trials that involved over 60,000 people to test their safety and effectiveness, according to the federal agency. The vaccines are made by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.
Alhambra Rehab and Healthcare and Greenville Nursing and Rehab Center are among the nursing homes that WLC owns. The company reported 57% of the staff at Alhambra Rehab was vaccinated on June 20. Greenville Nursing and Rehab was at 39%.
Merle Taylor, director of operations for WLC, said they are trying to encourage more employees to take the vaccine by offering them incentives.
WLC, as well as BRIA Health Services with locations in Belleville and Cahokia, have both offered bonuses for vaccinated workers. Taylor said WLC is also in the process of organizing a new campaign: a drawing that vaccinated employees can enter for a paid vacation.
“You hate to have to pay anyone — and I’ll say bribe anyone — to get vaccinated, but we also feel that it’s in the best interest of the residents and of their coworkers if they are vaccinated, not to mention their families,” Taylor said.
“The bottom line is if you wanna protect yourself and people you love and people you work with, I just believe that the vaccination is necessary.”
