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St. Joseph’s Health Not Anticipating Large Changes Due To Vaccine Mandate

St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center
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One of the largest hospitals in Central New York is working hard to make sure its doctors, nurses, and staff are vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to complywith a new state requirement. St. Joseph’s is required to ask employees to provide proof of their vaccination status. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Philip Falcone says they’ve been educating employees in advance about how important the COVID vaccine is to stop the spread of the virus.

“Right now, we are looking at a reasonably good amount of our staff, certainly 94%, which I think is great. We will be looking at everything here as far as our services. We are hoping not to have any significant disruptions.”

Although, Falcone adds that St. Joe’s is looking to reduce some of its elective surgeries in an effort to maintain proper staffing levels. But he does not anticipate a substantial change in hospital services to deal with the vaccine mandate.

“Very few positions who have not gotten vaccinated. So, it’s kind of hard to tell exactly right now if how many of these staffs are nurses, Some of them as I said are support staff that are not patient facing.”

Falcone believes there is also a fair number of employees who are vaccinated, but simply haven’t submitted their documentation yet. He also acknowledges some might be either very hesitant or hold very specific personal reasons for not getting the vaccine.

The hospital is giving employees until October 8th to comply with the State’s vaccination requirement. Otherwise, unvaccinated employees will lose their jobs.