As various deadlines approach or pass for long-term care employees to get COVID-19 vaccinations, it’s obvious that the topic is hot unlike any other.
And it’s obvious David Nace, M.D., MPH, is someone we should get to know. As the immediate past president of AMDA, the LTC medical directors association, his deep background as a flu vaccination specialist is invaluable.
History, he believes, is on the side of making something as important as COVID-19 vaccinations a condition of employment. Especially if a person wants to work around the frail elderly.
“They [mandates] are already essential to what we do with a wide variety of conditions — measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, hepatitis B,” Nace points out. The “only” way to get to 80% or 90% is making vaccination a condition of employment, he says.
Fears of staff leaving their jobs over such conditional employment are overblown, he insists. Employees do leave job sites but usually because of “toxic” work environments caused by other factors such as pay — not because of a vaccine that has been proven beneficial to hundreds of millions of people.
“People say they will go elsewhere. That is bunk. We know from the flu vaccine that is bunk,” he says. “People don’t leave because of hepatitis or influenza vaccines.
“People say that [they’ll leave] all the time. It’s a myth,” he doubles down, citing low departure rates seen by some mandate adopters. “We need to stop saying they will. There are employees who don’t like masks or to wash their hands. You have the right not to wash your hands or wear a mask — but you don’t have the right to work at this particular institution. When you agree to join, you agree to procedures. You have to follow those, based on patient safety.”
Isn’t safety what patients and families are always interested in? Nace believes patient expectations could deliver some providers the fortitude needed to make vaccinations a condition of employment.
“Residents and family members ask about it all the time. There’s that expectation out there, and families will start to choose a facility based on that,” he observes.“If they’re planning to go for surgery or rehab, they always ask exactly what the COVID status is in the building. People will be driven toward safety and care. [Providers] that try to cut costs and are less apt to rock the boat with regard to what they are doing will probably be the ones that lose out.”
From the September 2021 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
