‘Lead by example’: Truman Medical Centers sends message with COVID vaccine mandate

The rapid rise in hospitalizations caused by the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus made it necessary for the Truman Medical Centers/University Health system to require its 4,500 employees to be vaccinated, hospital officials said Monday.

But the move is also meant to send a message to the public about the vaccines: They are safe.

“To date now, we’ve given these vaccines to nearly 190 million people across the country, and there is no one in the major medical community that has any concerns about these vaccines and the high effectiveness of them,” said Dr. Mark Steele, Truman’s executive chief clinical officer.

Like other hospitals across Kansas City, Truman is seeing its COVID census rise, quickly. The hospital had 44 COVID patients on Monday, the highest number since January, Steele said. Just a couple of months ago the hospital had only five.

“We hit the peak back in the wintertime,” said Steele. “We got as high as the low 80s ... so we’re not to that point, but it’s been a really rapid rise and we’re concerned that it’s going to continue to rise if we don’t take some additional actions.”

Truman Medical Centers/University Health is an academic medical center providing health care in the Kansas City area. The main hospital location is at 2301 Holmes Street in Kansas City.

Low vaccination rates

Truman president and CEO Charlie Shields attributed the rise of new cases to low vaccination rates across the region and country.

At Truman, employees will be required to be vaccinated by September 20.

Exemptions will be given for medical and religious reasons. But those who choose not to be vaccinated will be out of a job, said Shields.

“We’ll wish them the very best in their next endeavor,” said Shields.

Shields said the move will help ensure that the staff is safe “and that we have the staff here to care for our patients, because if people have COVID they can’t work.”

But requiring employees to be vaccinated also demonstrates that Truman believes in the vaccines, said Shields.

Safety of vaccines

“As an academic medical center we base every decision on science,” said Shields. “And the science on the safety and efficacy of these vaccines is very clear to us.

“We want to make sure that people understand that we feel they’re safe, we feel they’re effective, they prevent hospitalizations, they prevent death and it’s the right thing to do. And we’re going to lead by example on that.”

Truman’s announcement came on the same day that nearly 60 medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, called on health care and long-term care employers to require their workers to get the COVID vaccine.

Also on Monday the Department of Veterans Affairs announced all its medical facility employees will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the first federal agency to do so.

“Vaccination is the primary way to put the pandemic behind us and avoid the return of stringent public health measures. Unfortunately, many health care and long-term care personnel remain unvaccinated,” the medical groups said in their statement.

“As we move towards full FDA approval of the currently available vaccines, all health care workers should get vaccinated for their own health, and to protect their colleagues, families, residents of long-term care facilities and patients.”

The groups pointed out, as did Truman officials, that many hospitals and long-term care facilities already require employees to be vaccinated for influenza and heptatis B.

But there has been legal pushback at some hospitals over a COVID vaccine mandate.

Legal ruling

In June a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by employees of Houston Methodist over the hospital’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for employees. The judge ruled that the health system did not violate state or federal law by requiring the shots.

“We’ve researched that and we came to the same conclusion,” said Shields. “I think Houston Methodist was certainly a key case. I don’t think there’s a concern from a legal standpoint, an employment rights standpoint. I think we’re on pretty firm ground here.”

Hospitals and nursing homes across the country are known to be struggling to get employees vaccinated.

To date, about 70% of Truman employees have been vaccinated against COVID-19, a rate “fairly consistent with hospitals across the country and across the state,” said Shields, who added that that number will climb to 100% with the mandate.

“I think sometimes staff are listening to some of the same false information that’s out there as others,” said Shields. “We’re asking people to listen to our infectious disease docs, our experts. Listen to the national experts. This is safe. It works.

“The level of misinformation that is out there is frankly unprecedented. I don’t think we’ve ever seen something like this happen ... this constant barrage people are getting on social media or emails with these outlandish stories.

“Obviously a health care system like Truman, our employees are not immune from that. They see it, too.”

Truman has administered nearly 115,000 vaccinations and “we just haven’t seen any of these things that some of these outlandish myths ... say,” said Shields.

“You read it and you say, where is this coming from? I wish people would start to begin to think about the sources of some of that information versus the sources that come from actual scientists, but even more so physicians that people trust for every other medical decision in their life. They need to trust them on this one, too.”

FDA approval

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson for emergency use but has not given them full approval, though that’s expected to happen within the next couple of months.

Other Kansas City hospitals have said they would wait for full FDA approval before mandating employees to be vaccinated.

“We’ve always considered that we’ve taken a leadership role in this area,” said Shields. “The fact that we were the first in the metro to have the vaccine, and the fact that we’ve done 130,000 plus tests, 115,000 vaccinations.

“But I think you will see organizations not just in the metro, but across the state, across the nation, revisit this issue. Because some of those decisions were made prior to the delta variant taking such a hold.

“I think even those organizations that said they were going to wait, they may choose to revisit this.”