OHCA The Oregon Caregiver Fall Winter 2021

www.ohca.com FALL/WINTER 2021 The Oregon Caregiver 9 FEATURE An added variable in the workforce crisis has been the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers in Oregon. This mandate, which OHCA supports, went into effect on October 18. “We saw the mandate as a good thing. Not only is it clinically the right call, but we hoped that we could use it as a tool to show potential new caregivers and staff how safe it is to work in long term care communities with such a high percent- age of people within buildings being vaccinated,” she said. “However, there is no doubt that, ultimately, the mandate exacerbated the workforce crisis.” “Leading up to the mandate deadline, our team and our provider members worked incredibly hard to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates among our workforce,” said Kirschbaum. “This included one-on-one conversations between building leaders and their teams to understand why individuals weren’t getting vaccinated and a concerted effort to dispel false information about the vaccines that has spread across social media, which has been a major cause for vaccine hesitancy statewide and nation- wide. It’s just a continuous conversation and, unfortunately, the misinformation still seems to be winning the game with a lot of people.” Kirschbaum adds that, while OHCA has always encouraged everyone who could get a COVID-19 vaccine to be vaccinated, providers also had the American Disabilities Act as well as medical and seriously held religious beliefs exceptions to consider. Even with all the effort by providers, OHCA, and other stakeholders to encourage all long term care workers to get vaccinated to meet the mandate, some individuals simply did not want to get vaccinated and left the long term care workforce, causing the workforce shortages to intensify. One solution to staffing shortages that the state has utilized is creating two special staffing programs, both of which recruit caregivers from outside the state. One contract with Around the Clock Healthcare Services (ATC) is for crisis staffing in long term care, and another with Jogan has been specific to support- ing hospital decompression. Situations where ATC might be deployed, Kirschbaum said, are outbreak situations or dire staffing shortages. “We’re continuously reviewing case, county transmission rates and outbreak data to assist with targeting support staff deployments where possible,” she said. CONTINUES » “They’ve dealt with COVID outbreaks, their own losses, regulatory changes, staffing challenges, and more, and folks still show up every day to take care of our residents. It does nothing but bring me pride every single day. I could not be happier with our team out in the field.” – Matt Hamilton, Linda Vista Care Center, Ashland The Caregiver School of Learning program restarted at the end of October.