DULUTH, Min. (WSVN) — A Minnesota health care provider has fired nearly 50 employees due to their refusal to get a flu shot.
According to the Star Tribune, Essentia Health fired dozens of its employees after the company made it mandatory to either get a shot, or provide a medical or religious exemption.
The company operates 15 hospitals and 75 clinics in Minnesota, Idaho, Wisconsin and North Dakota, and said the goal was to keep their patients from getting sick.
Dr. Rajesh Prabhu, an infectious disease specialist and Essentia’s chief patient safety officer, told The Star Tribune that while the vaccine is not 100 percent effective, there is a greater need to vaccinate hospital workers who interact with severely ill patients.
“We are working in a different environment,” Prabhu told the paper. “We’re taking care of patients. We have a different sort of ethical obligation.”
Nearly all of the employees complied with the mandate and got the shot. However, Fox 9 reports that employees were told that if they didn’t get their shot by Nov. 10, then they would face termination on Nov. 20.
Nurses for the company said they proposed a voluntary program that rewarded employees that got the shot, rather than firing the employees. The nurses also requested sick time for those who had adverse reactions to the flu shot, according to Fox 9.
Nurses who were fired said they plan to fight the mandate.
According to Fox 9, the Minnesota Department of Health is not taking a side in the debate, and they don’t have a specific policy for health care providers regarding flu shots. They did say that they do promote flu shots for employees around high-risk patients. However, the infectious disease director said there is no data that supports that a mandate reduces the number of flu cases in hospitals.
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