34,000 unvaccinated home caregivers in New York lose their jobs

The vaccination rate among home health workers in New York City as a deadline arrived Thursday for them to receive Covid vaccines was around 86%, exceeding the expectations of some union and industry leaders and suggesting that thousands of people may have made the last minute decision to get vaccinated. , according to preliminary state data.

But the state’s investigation of agencies providing home health care also showed that at least 34,000 workers appeared to have missed the deadline to get vaccinated under the state’s new mandate, making them unable to work and exacerbating the labor shortage in the industry.

Some industry executives had predicted that just 70% of workers would be likely to be vaccinated before the deadline, and the higher than expected rate suggested some workers may have chosen to be vaccinated to save their jobs.

Faced with a similar cut the week before, staff at New York’s hospitals and nursing homes accepted the blow in greater numbers than home health aides, who typically earn just above minimum wage. About 92% of hospital and nursing home workers had received at least one injection when their deadline came on September 27.

Although home health workers were largely ignored during the pandemic, New York State has at least 250,000, with some estimates reaching over 500,000. The deadline applied to employees at 1,500 health care agencies. state-approved home health care. Another 30 percent of home helpers statewide were hired directly by patients under a Medicaid program and were not subject to the mandate.

New York had never previously released data on the percentage of home helpers vaccinated, making it impossible to compare with the new figures, which were released on Friday.

The figures come from a Department of Health survey of all licensed home care agencies, which asked them to report their immunization levels on Thursday. Agencies representing some 245,000 workers responded. They reported that, on average, 86 percent of their employees had been partially vaccinated and 71 percent had been fully vaccinated.

The home care workforce in New York has suffered from severe shortages that have only been exacerbated by the pandemic, as has been the case in other states. At the same time, the demand for home care has increased as people have tried to keep loved ones out of nursing homes, in part because of poor conditions in homes that the pandemic has exposed.

While the loss of workers was not as large as feared, some industry executives have warned that the loss of 5% or 10% of helpers in an area already suffering from a labor shortage work could result in the reduction or elimination of care for thousands of patients. The losses could also create backlogs of patients in hospitals that typically refer patients to home care, executives said.

Al Cardillo, president of the New York State Home Care Association, said the percentages alone didn’t tell the whole story. Even some agencies with high vaccination rates were losing large numbers of staff who would be difficult to replace, he said.

“I just received a note from an agency in the New York area that today had to remove 175 home health aides from service to comply,” Cardillo wrote in an email. . “And this comes from an agency with a 94% vaccination rate among the assistants. One hundred and seventy-five helpers in an agency, in addition to the emergency shortage that already exists, it is simply enormous. “