Excela eyes covid vaccine mandate for hospital employees as delta variant spreads; nearly 40% of workers remain unvaccinated

Westmoreland County’s largest hospital system and employer is contemplating requiring health care workers to get vaccinated for covid-19 as concerns mount over the delta variant spreading rapidly among the unvaccinated.

Excela Health, which employs about 4,300 across three hospitals and more than a dozen outpatient, testing and therapy providers, does not have imminent plans to force the 38% of its workers who remain unvaccinated to get a shot to keep their jobs — as dozens of hospital operators have begun to do elsewhere in Pennsylvania and nationwide. But its top medical executive says Excela is considering an employee vaccine mandate as a protective measure, in line with the recommendations of a growing list of experts and industry leaders.

“Given the virulence of the delta variant and an expected rise in cases during the fall, it is certainly something we are exploring,” Excela Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Carol Fox told the Tribune-Review on Thursday.

Excela’s three-hospital system — Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant, Latrobe Hospital in Latrobe, and Westmoreland Hospital in Greensburg — joins an increasing number of health organizations mulling whether to mandate vaccinations as the pandemic rages on and participation in vaccine clinics wanes, even among those who work directly with vulnerable patients. Vaccine hesitancy is more prevalent among lower-paid workers with less education and training. More than 96% of doctors are fully vaccinated, the American Medical Association reports, whereas just 1 in 4 of all hospitals workers are inoculated.

Major hospital providers in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York and Arizona have implemented vaccine mandates in various forms, as has the Philadelphia-based Penn Medicine/University of Pennsylvania Health System and Phoenix-based Banner Health, which is Arizona’s largest private employer with about 52,000 people across six states.

Pennsylvania’s largest non-government employer, Downtown Pittsburgh-based UPMC, is not currently considering mandating vaccinations for its more than 90,000 employees — though its leaders have not ruled out the possibility of doing so.

“We are not changing our current policy on this,” UPMC spokeswoman Taylor Andres said by email. “UPMC encourages all staff to receive the covid-19 vaccine, and we offer many opportunities for vaccination to ease the process.

“Vaccination is one layer of protection; at UPMC, our multiple infection prevention efforts — including mandatory employee, patient and visitor masking — are highly effective at preventing transmission of covid-19 within our facilities,” added Andres. “We will continue to collect data and weigh evidence on the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccines and may require our employees to receive them in the future.”

Such a mandate is not under discussion as of this week for Highmark Health’s Allegheny Health Network.

“We have no plans at this point to make covid-19 vaccination mandatory at AHN,” said AHN spokeswoman Candace Herrington, “however, we believe strongly that everyone in our community should be vaccinated, and particularly health care professionals who are at heightened risk of exposure to the virus.”

Nationwide, at least 25% of workers who came into direct contact with patients across more than 2,500 hospitals had not received any doses of a covid-19 vaccine by the end of May, according to a Medscape Medical News/WebMD analysis of federal data.

Here’s how regional health systems stack up in terms of employee vaccination rates of this week:

• Excela — 62% of 4,300 employees are confirmed to be fully vaccinated— though Dr. Fox said “that figure is likely higher because of the availability of vaccine elsewhere in the community,” with workers not reporting vaccine doses they may have received at non-Excela clinics.

• UPMC — 70% of more than 90,000 employees are vaccinated across 40 hospitals, 700 doctors’ offices, cancer centers and other providers.

“The covid-19 vaccination rates evolve over time,” Andres said. “UPMC targets even higher vaccine participation to employees with education and vaccine availability to optimize the health of our workers, patients and our communities.”

• Allegheny Health Network — 72% of more than 21,000 employees across 13 hospitals and other providers and outpatient facilities.

“We continue to explore strategies that will help increase vaccine rates both in the general public and among our employees,” Herrington said.

• Heritage Valley Health System — 69% of more than 3,000 employees across three hospitals as well as physician offices and outpatient centers.

“At this time, Heritage Valley will not be mandating that its employees receive the vaccine,” said Norm Mitry, president & CEO of Heritage Valley Health System. “Our major concern is, with the public now being unmasked and the arrival of the delta variant, that the covid-19 surge will return.”

• St. Clair Health — Nearly 85% of 2,500 employees are fully vaccinated at St. Clair Hospital in Mt. Lebanon and affiliated facilities, the highest such rate reported in the region.

“Given the high rate of vaccination among St. Clair Health employees, the vaccine is not mandatory and the focus remains on education,” a St. Clair Health spokesman said by email.

Though they had first access to getting vaccinated in late December and early January, the overall average rates of vaccinations among health care workers do not stray too far from those of the general population, where vaccine hesitancy remains a problem that worries infectious disease experts. Estimates suggest that 70% to 90% of the population needs to either be vaccinated or have strong enough antibodies from having been infected by the coronavirus disease to reach herd immunity — the point at which the virus will not spread across communities at uncontrolled rates.

The influx in employee vaccine mandates being rolled out or contemplated comes as the American Hospital Association thrusts its support behind hospitals that adopt mandatory covid-19 vaccination policies. Last week, a coalition of seven other medical organizations — including the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, Association for Professionals in Epidemiology and Infection, Infectious Diseases Society of America and Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society — went so far as to declare that covid vaccinations “should be a condition of employment for all health care personnel.”

“The evidence is clear: COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective in reducing both the risk of becoming infected and spreading the virus to others,” AHA CEO Richard Pollack said in a statement.

Policies vary widely among and within states.

In Oregon, industry advocates say that health care workers there cannot be forced to get any type of vaccine based on a 1989 state law that explicitly forbids such a mandate (“An employee shall not be required as a condition of work to be immunized …”). New York Mayor Bill de Blasio issued an order Wednesday requiring staff at the city’s public hospitals to either get vaccinated or face weekly testing. Meanwhile, states such as Tennessee moved to make it illegal for companies to make any individual get vaccinated as a condition of employment and did not exempt health care employers.

RELATED: 5 things to know about delta variant of coronavirus

Staff writer Renatta Signorini contributed.