R.I. home care group calls for vaccine exemptions, citing projected staff exodus, coverage gaps

Updated at 4:49 p.m. on Aug. 31, 2021.

PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Partnership for Home Care is calling on the state government to exempt home care workers from Rhode Island’s health care worker vaccination mandate, the organization said Tuesday.

The group is projecting that 1,000 home care patients and clients in the state will lose continuity of care by Sept. 30 due to an anticipated reduction in the workforce. The mandate will take effect Oct. 1.

The partnership claims it is seeing hundreds of resignations from home care nurses, allied health professionals, social workers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists and office staff that are leaving their jobs rather than be vaccinated against COVID-19.

The partnership said that it expects the resignations would impact roughly 8% of its workforce and 4.7% of patients. 

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”We are hopeful that direct care workers reconsider their vaccination choice if they are seeking a religious or political exemption, but this is where we are at in this current moment based on employee resignations,” said Nicholas Oliver, executive director of the Rhode Island Partnership for Home Care, in an email to PBN, noting that many of those who said they will not be vaccinated by the deadline are “seeking temporary medical exemptions due to active treatment for chronic illnesses or are seeking to become pregnant, experiencing a high-risk pregnancy or are currently breastfeeding a newborn with health issues.”

The executive order enacted by Gov. Daniel J. McKee currently does not permit temporary medical exemptions.

“While home care administrators are supportive of patients, clients and employees getting vaccinated, it should remain a decision between an individual patient and their physician. We are losing excellent direct care staff that have been on the front line throughout this pandemic,” said Michael Bigney, president of the board of directors for the Rhode Island Partnership for Home Care and administrator of Home Health and Hospice Care of Nursing Placement, in a statement. “I hope that every displaced patient and client calls Governor McKee to tell him that this mandate is wrong. Discharging vulnerable homebound patients and clients without continuity of home care may contribute to more hospitalizations than any COVID-19 breakthrough variant. It does not seem that Governor McKee or his Health Department thought through this policy before enacting it.”

“While we hope that all remaining unvaccinated home care workers will reconsider their vaccination choice, we are requesting that the Health Department and municipal leaders prepare for this potential widespread problem caused by this emergency regulation,” Oliver said in a statement.

McKee said Tuesday afternoon that, for now, the state will not be providing exemptions.

“We’ll worry about the people that are somehow caught in the crosshairs because of what they believe, but at this point in time, we’re not moving off of that,” McKee said.

“People are going to get vaccinated,” Mckee said of health care workers. “They know that the safer they are, the safer the people they are serving are.”

The Providence Journal reported Monday that the state’s nursing home industry is also expecting a staffing crunch due to the mandate, as workers that refuse the vaccine exit the field.

Update: Adds paragraphs 9-11 with comments from Gov. Daniel J. McKee.