ALBANY — Thousands of nurses and other medical professionals across New York could lose their jobs next week when a state mandate requiring them to be vaccinated for coronavirus is scheduled to be enforced. If that happens, it would compound a staffing crisis already afflicting many hospitals and long-term care facilities — including group homes for disabled individuals, where some nurses are being forced to work 24-hour shifts.
The state Department of Health's latest estimates indicate that about 81 percent of hospital employees have been fully vaccinated, but many others are declining or reluctant to be vaccinated — putting them on a collision course with the mandate set to take effect on Sept. 27, when those workers will be required to have received at least one COVID-19 vaccination shot.
In facilities run by the state Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, some nurses are being forced to work triple shifts (roughly 24 hours) to care for residents, according to internal OPWDD correspondence obtained by the Times Union.
"As with all human services fields nationwide, COVID-19 has had a significant impact on an already shrinking field of available nurses and direct support workers and OPWDD is taking an active role along with our providers of services on finding solutions to the workforce issues faced by our field," the agency said in a statement. "When necessary, OPWDD may require nurses to work overtime to provide care to the people we serve if there is no other option to ensure safety."
OPWDD officials said they follow state law when mandating overtime "to provide safe patient care and OPWDD has exhausted all other avenues." If an employee is mandated to work 24 hours, the agency's policy required the person to be given an eight-hour period to sleep after they have worked 16 hours, while other employees provide coverage.
At state-run hospitals, staffing is also an issue and hundreds of nurses remained unvaccinated on Monday, including roughly 200 at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and about 100 nurses at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. Statewide, nearly 20 percent of hospital employees were unvaccinated for coronavirus as of Monday, according to state health department data.
The staffing crisis has prompted some hospitals to eliminate elective surgeries and to divert some people in need of medical treatment to other facilities.
"While Upstate University Hospital continues to ensure the best care for our patients, we are proactively taking temporary measures to focus on COVID cases, as well as safely meet the critical care needs of the community," the hospital said in a statement. "This includes postponing some elective surgeries. Upstate is like many other hospitals across the country — balancing staffing challenges as we see increasing demand for patient care. Our nursing staff in particular has been working around the clock helping patients, and we will support them so they can continue to provide the highest level of care."
The nurses at state-run facilities are represented by the Public Employees Federation (PEF), the state's second-largest labor union, which on Friday filed a petition with the state Public Employment Relations Board stating it had reached an impasse in negotiations over the mandate with the Governors Office of Employee Relations. The negotiations began in July after former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced the vaccine mandates for health care workers at state-run hospitals.
Since then, private hospitals and medical offices are also facing a similar mandate for their employees.
The union's filing with PERB noted the state Department of Health's initial mandate set out both medical and religious exemptions for unvaccinated individuals to avoid discipline and keep their jobs. The religious exemptions were subsequently removed by the state, without consulting labor groups.
Last week, a federal judge in Utica issued an order temporarily restraining employers from enforcing the state vaccine mandate on health care workers who have sought a religious exemption.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge David N. Hurd was handed down in a case filed against Gov. Kathy Hochul, health Commissioner Howard Zucker and state Attorney General Letitia James on behalf of 17 medical professionals. It is scheduled to be argued next week.
In that case, the group of plaintiffs are a mix of mostly physicians and nurses "who allege that their sincere religious beliefs compel them to refuse the COVID-19 vaccines that are currently available," Hurd's ruling states.
The head of the state Health Facilities Association last week urged the health department to pause its vaccine mandates for health care workers because, it said, nursing homes and other assisted-living facilities are also facing critical staffing shortages that are expected to worsen when potentially thousands of employees will face termination if they are not vaccinated.
Stephen B. Hanse, president of the Health Facilities Association that represents more than 450 nursing and assisted-living facilities, said that a survey they conducted found between 86 and 99 percent of the facilities are facing staffing shortages, which he characterized as "alarming."
Of those faced with staffing shortages, nearly 60 percent said the workforce crisis is "negatively impacting their ability to admit new residents from hospitals and the community."
Hanse urged Zucker to amend the vaccination policy "for health care workers to authorize, at least on a temporary basis, unvaccinated health care workers the ability to continue to work so long as they are subjected to regular COVID-19 testing and utilize all necessary (personal protective equipment)."
PEF President Wayne Spence said the union is urging the state to increase salaries for nurses and other medical professionals. He said the situation at OPWDD is especially dire.
"OPWDD is in crisis. And it's a crisis of the state's own making," Spence said. "For almost a decade now, New York has deprived OPWDD of funding and resources to serve New York's most vulnerable citizens — all in a misguided effort to stay under the 2 percent annual spending cap. We are now seeing the drastic impact of those budgetary decisions. Demand for the services provided by PEF professionals at OPWDD far exceeds the supply available."
Jill Montag, a spokeswoman for Zucker, said the department is "aware of potential staffing concerns."
"However, our overriding focus is the protection of patients and residents in our health care settings," Montag said.
Initially, Cuomo had required workers at state-run hospitals to be vaccinated. On Aug. 16, when he announced the expanded mandate, the governor said 25 percent of the state's approximately 450,000 hospital workers were not vaccinated.
At a state Senate hearing last week, OPWDD Commissioner Theodore Kastner told a committee that there were many workers in their facilities who have also declined to be vaccinated.
"It's every reason that you could imagine. ... It’s a concern," Kastner said.
If thousands of medical employees across the state are forced out of work next week, it will exacerbate a staffing crisis that took shape before the coronavirus pandemic, in part due to low wages and tough working conditions.
State officials said they have secured pay raises since 2015 for many of the workers affected by the mandate and are also hoping to tap federal stimulus funding to offer additional compensation. In its negotiations with the Governors Office of Employee Relations, PEF had discussed awarding five additional vacation days to any public-facing health care worker in state-run facilities who have been vaccinated.
The governor's administration rejected that idea and, according to the PERB filing, has not established processes — including any appeal system — for employees who assert they cannot get vaccinated for religious or medical reasons.
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