By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Mosaic Life Care has an important deadline approaching, the deadline for its workers to get vaccinated.
Mosaic has mandated that all of its approximately 4,500 health care workers begin the COVID-19 vaccination process by the 5th.
Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Davin Turner, says Mosaic expects to lose some employees over the mandate, but only some.
“We do expect to lose a small number of folks from our workforce, but we believe that number to be very consistent with around the national average that many other healthcare organizations have seen, which is around the one to two percent range,” Turner tells reporters gathered for a news conference at the St. Joseph hospital.
At present, Mosaic reports that slightly more than 92% of its workforce has been vaccinated against the coronavirus. A few more than 250 workers have been granted an exemption, mainly for religious reasons, but some for medical reasons. Turner says few workers have filed for a medical exemption. Mosaic expects a total of between 300 to 350 workers to receiver a waiver.
The Biden Administration issued a vaccination mandate for all health care workers through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. For now, the courts have blocked enforcement, questioning whether the federal government has the authority to enforce such a mandate. The legality of the mandate has yet to be decided.
Turner says the Mosaic requirement is separate from the federal mandate and stands even if the courts overturn the Biden Administration vaccine mandate.
“It’s the right thing to do for the patients that we care for,” Turner states. “The needs of the patient come first. And it’s the right thing to do for our workforce, whether they get a waiver through religious-medical or they get vaccinated.”
Turner says the importance of vaccinations is demonstrated by the fact that only about 32 Mosaic workers are off work due to COVID-19 or contact with an infected person.
“Which, for where our numbers are, that’s lower than what we had seen previously, a little bit,” according to Turner. “So, we are seeing benefits from the vaccine and we certainly hope and believe that as we finish through our vaccinations, we will see those numbers not be as high.”
Turner says though he believes the community will have to learn how to live with COVID-19, he’s more optimistic about handling the virus than he was two years ago.
“I’m going to tell you personally; I am more hopeful because we have more abilities to treat this disease or protect you against it.”